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Market Assistant  ver. 1.0
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      Date: June 21st, 2026
    Author: Wildefire SE
Inspired by Capt. Murphy, Wildeblood & Spara


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Instructions:
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Head to a planet of technical level 9, or above, where you can purchase the Market Assistant from the ship outfitters for 2026 credits. Market Assistant will not be offered in the ship outfitters in communist systems. Being an artificial intelligence, and not heavy equipment, Market Assistant is portable between ships, and will stay with you if you buy a new ship in the shipyard.

As soon as you install the Market Assistant expansion pack it will begin keeping a permanent, long-run account of all your trading. It will do this immediately, before you buy the equipment in game. If the equipment is damaged, record-keeping will silently continue. See the note below regarding the Backup Datalogger if you wish to remove the Market Assistant expansion pack temporarily.


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Features:
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Once purchased, the Market Assistant will:-

1) Monitor your cargo trades in real time, and give an immediate warning if you are paying unusually high prices, or selling for low prices that are likely to result in unprofitable trading.

2) Record the prices you pay for cargo, and display a list of the average prices paid for each cargo type.

3) Offer recommendations of which commodities to buy and sell, based on current market prices.

4) Remind you about cargo that has been aboard too long, taking up valuable space.

5) Show information screens revealing which commodities you have traded most profitably over time, and which stations you have recently visited.

6) Market Assistant OXP also includes Turbotrade ATS, an Automatic Trading System.


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Turbotrade ATS:
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By default Turbotrade is off, to enable it go to the market assistant screen (from the F4 interfaces screen) and select either fast or slow trading mode. Twenty-two seconds after you view the commodity market screen Turbotrade will begin trading on your behalf, fully automatically. Make a nice cup of tea, sit back and watch as Turbotrade takes the effort out of trading. Why press buttons yourself when Turbotrade can do it for you? (You can, of course, continue to trade normally yourself while Turbotrade is trading.)

From the market assistant screen you can also set a reserve space for Turbotrade to allow when buying cargo. That will leave empty space in your cargo hold for from 1 to 5 cargo pods or equivalent - useful if you like to do some mining along the way.

Turbotrade uses advanced, situational Select-o-Ethics to minimize legal red-tape while maximizing opportunities for profit. However, if you prefer a more ethical (or ruthless) trading style, this can also be altered from the configuration screen. Market Assistant also features a trainable AI which will observe and mimic the player's trading style, and which over-rides Turbotrade's price expectations. For new users this will be the default behaviour, and can also be selected from the configuration screen.


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Backup Datalogger:
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Sometimes, you might wish to disable or remove Market Assistant OXP temporarily while you experiment, or just for fun, remembering trading the old-fashioned way. Will that mean a gap in your accounts?

No. Available for download is an expansion pack called "Market Assistant Backup Datalogger". That expansion pack will normally be inactive and do nothing, however if you remove the Market Assistant expansion pack the backup datalogger will automatically take over record-keeping functions. The Market Assistant will not function, but:-
 (1) record-keeping will silently continue and be up-to-date when you replace the Market Assistant expansion pack, and:
 (2) you will not have to re-purchase the equipment in the game.

You can install the Market Assistant Backup Datalogger expansion pack right away and forget about it; it will cause no performace loss and is completely inert while the main Market Assistant expansion pack is present.


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Other features:
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Turbotrade scans bulk contracts each time it starts and won't sell cargo subject to contracts.

Turbotrade script includes facility for future transaction logging plug-in.

Turbotrade script includes a Learning AI, records and mimics the player's trading style. 

Receiving a commms message from another ship pauses Turbotrade for 15 seconds to avoid over-writing the message.

Arbitrage display at non-main stations. At a rock hermit or OXP station:
      - Select home on the navigation chart to see the arbitrage display.
      - Select another destination system to avoid the new display.

Select-o-Ethics on configuration screen. (Choose whether and when to trade illegal goods.)

Automatic trading plays bell sounds, just like normal trading.


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Installation Note:
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Unzip and place the "Market Assistant.oxp" folder into your AddOns directory
(alongside your Oolite save game / install, in the standard location for
your OS - see http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/AddOns for details).
Optionally also install "Market Assistant Backup Datalogger.oxp" the same
way; it can safely live there permanently.

Tested against Oolite 1.92.1. Requires Oolite 1.80 or later (for the F4
Interfaces screen and condition_script equipment gating used throughout).
