Related:
Trading Computer causing lag 1.8b2
Trade computer gives different recommendations at different stations
Trading Computer should reveal trade routes between stations

From Archcannon: show information about the recommended system. E.g. distance, whether you've visited, coreward/outward if applicable.

Those are great ideas.

Random thought: If the trading computer tells us which station to sell to because it has the highest price then it would be good to check that the station will actually buy the item. Not give a "is not interested in buying the item" screen description when the player finally arrives. This would be very frustrating if the station is 3 systems away!

I haven't checked if this is already handled because the code is too complex for me.

@Relanat, see my comment in the "Trade computer gives different recommendations at different stations" ticket, it does not check if the station is still interested, it even does not check if the station buying it for that price has been destroyed in that system.

I've made several improvements in PR 99. Most notably:

- Gives recommendations in buy screen if you can resell for a profit.
- Gives a local recommendation and an out-of-system recommendation if possible and the out-of-system price is better (and both are better than the current purchase or sale price, if applicable).
- Fixes a bug where it recommends selling to the object in the system that offers the largest quantity of currency units, even if it's not the most valuable offer.
- If multiple objects in system offer the best price, recommends the closest one.
- Can recommend selling to ships.
- Works for damaged items.

Merged @NMS's PR into 1.8 Beta 3.

Could the Trading Computer show a global catalog of all known shops?

Well, we'd have to store the names and inventories (items an object has that it has a sell price for) of all shops (active friendly ships and stations with trade descs) whenever the player leaves a system. But we probably have to do this anyway if we want to avoid recommending selling to objects that won't buy any more or in systems where there aren't any objects that buy the item (anymore?). I could dig into the code to see how the game determines the sell price for another system and how it stores info about other systems to show on the galaxy map. But it would be easier to ask George first during the stream Thursday.

Currently, it recommends other systems with good prices even if no objects are known there. If possible performance-wise, maybe it should only take into account prices offered by known objects.

Note: I haven't checked PR99 yet.

Could the Trading Computer show a global catalog of all known shops?

This would be a really good upgrade from the standard trading computer. Maybe another ROM to cover mid-level trade info of known stations and a cube to give even more advanced info. The more advanced info could take into account profit margin, tonnage and distance covered (either within the same system or between systems) to give a relative value to how much profit could be made.
Or two ROMs, one with mid-level and another with advanced info, and the cube(s) could give info on other currencies.

maybe it should only take into account prices offered by known objects

That makes sense. But that might tend to encourage backtracking.
It could also show prices for stations in the next couple of systems if that station type has already been encountered.
A corporate arms dealer station in one system could make available info on any other arms dealers within, as an example, 3 systems away. Similar to your local shop telling you they don't have the item but it is available at their other shop which isn't far away.
So then the trading computer could use item sell/buy recommendations from the other station even if the player hasn't found it yet. And the station(s) in the other system could be set 'known' based on their being "discovered" from the current stations info. Might need the player to dock with the current station for this to happen or it could turn into a 'setKnown' avalanche. Dunno.

The trading Computer could also offer recommendations for different currencies. An item that is bought by Ringers could recommend selling at one station for credits and another station for rin. Then the player could get more of the currency they want.
Another feature that would be nice is displaying how many of an item a station is still willing to buy. This could be a feature of advanced trading computers so trading doesn't become too easy.