Can you give us more information on your background, and how it makes you qualified for this position ?
Well, from Stardate 1.0 to Stardate 530.9 I conquered a galactic empire for a bloodthirsty Emperor, so I think I can say I am well traveled and know how to foster talent amongst my coworkers ?
Games Galactic Civilizations How will you rule your galaxy? Sins of a Solar Empire Real-time strategy. Unrivaled scale. Elemental A fantasy world full of magic and heroes. Offworld Trading Company Save humanity. Preferably both. Star Control The space action/adventure classic returns. Galactic Traders II Players. A Galactic Trading strategy game.
And why did you leave your former job after almost 530 years of service ?
Well, for starters, my now-former boss is trying to kill me!
Galactic Trader is the second episode of the Galactic Saga. After conquering an Empire for Emperor Tawala, the main character of the first episode (Julien Du Buque) has been given the pink slip – after all why would the Emperor need a popular hero in command of a powerful military when there is no more system to conquer but only power to consolidate.
Instead of retiring with a massive pension and/or touring the universe to give TedX conferences, Du Buque decides to start a trade empire with the objective of accumulating one billion galactic credits. There must have been some inflation in the meantime, because I don’t think I spent more than 50 000 in Galactic Empire.
The player will quickly realize making a profit is significantly more difficult than conquering an empire, as the economy of the universe seems to have been conceived to frustrate the player.
- I joked in my introduction to my Galactic Empire article that the “Empire” was managed like a petty kingdom of the old Anglo-saxon heptarchy The comparison was more apt than I imagined, because the galaxy also has an early medieval economy : currencies are useless except in Galactica, everywhere else barter is key,
- There is no communication between the systems, the only way to know the relative price of items in a system is to go there physically,
- Traders have weird principles. You point them one of your goods and how much you are willing to trade. They make one or two proposals based on this. If you refuse, they ask you to make your own proposal – only one. They can accept, refuse outright or ask you to meet them “in the middle”, but, whatever happens, once they have heard your counter-proposal (or if you don’t make one) they refuse to ever rediscuss bartering those goods until you depart the system and come back !
Also, clearly there is only one trader by planet. Talk about monopoly.
- Finally – and that’s the most frustrating issue – fuel cost is crippling, and proportional to both the weight carried and the distance traveled.
The cost of fuel means that every time you find one of those great deals where they give you thousands of… whatever those things are… for one unit of goods, you cannot take the deal (not fully anyway) because you cannot possibly carry the goods.
There is one island of rationality in this universe though : the fuel cartels. There are present in every single world, accept “no” for an answer and will exchange oil for goods. Their exchange rates will give a good proxy of the value of a good on a given world – though they will only give you a price for goods you do have.
Therefore, my strategy was to buy one unit of each good, tour quite a few planets with that, avoid the merchant waiting for me at the starport , rush to the local office of Royal Dutch Shell, ask a local sales rep. how much fuel he is willing to give me for each of my goods, and then hop to next planet.
Back on Galactica, I had two surprises :
- Galactica had changed color for some reason – total nitpick,
- Tawala was trying to murder me, and I had better not come back to Galactica again !
At this point, I will admit that for the very first time on this blog I save-scummed on an After Action Report. My initial investigation had been unlucky in term of exchange prices, I had already prepared this starmap below and I just did not want to start again until I found a good deal !
Thanks to the power of save and reload, I investigated two distant planets : Sparta and Bok, and boy was there some profit to be made there.
At that point, I had price information on around one third of the systems, which would later expand to the following complete pricing list :
And after that, it was only a matter of execution, traveling mostly between the worlds of Viejo, Bok and Zoe to become filthy rich.
Doing my second Zoe-Bok route, I found out that a merchant had negotiated a monopoly with the empire :
It mattered little. Maybe the Consortium had exclusive rights on the Zoe-Bok route, but I could easily stop on any other planet with my load of Pylates that Bok craves, then take-off again immediately and voilà, I am not violating anyone’s exclusive rights.
And a few jumps later, as I arrived on Viejo with Tenibles :
The end ! Note that despite the manual claiming I need one billion, one hundred million of asset value turns out to be enough.
A bit disappointed, I had hoped my final jump would be to Galactica, where I could burst Prince Ali style in Tawala’s palace.
Final list of my travels :
Rating & Review
Galactic Trader by Douglas Carlston and later Brøderbund Software, USA
First release : 1979 on TRS-80
Tested on : Apple II
Total Hours Tested : 5
Average duration of a campaign: <3 hours
Difficulty: Advanced (2/5)
Would recommend to a modern player : Oh boy no.
Would recommend to a designer : No
Final Rating: Not rated (not a wargame).
Galactic Trader is the second opus of the Galactic Saga, and the only game in the saga that is not in any way a wargame. It is also, by general consensus, the weakest in the saga : the game does not flow naturally, it has very few options and death comes fast.
A. Immersion (Settings & Aesthetics)
The game uses exactly the same graphics as Galactic Empire, so I would give the same rating on graphics. On the other hand, it was impossible for me to get into the game.
Conquering the universe was one thing, but bartering “Hempites” and “Feelies” with people who at the same time seem powerful enough to have a trade monopoly on their planet (since if they are upset, you cannot trade on that planet) while behaving and negotiating as if they were in the bazaar just did not work for me.
B. UI , Clarity of rules and outcomes
The UI is poorly done, and for a game that simple it is really not acceptable.
- On a new planet, the first person you want to speak to is the local representative of the fuel cartel. The first person who will try to talk to you is the local trader, so you will have to shoo them off !
- So now you are talking to the fuel cartel, and the first thing they ask you is how much fuel you want, and whether you want to pay cash. Except you never want to pay for cash, so you have to say, every single time “I want 10 fuel units, but oh, no I forgot my wallet. But maybe I can interest you in 4 283 Tenibles – how many fuel units can I have with that ? 336 731 ? Sure, I will take all 336 731.”
- Then you will go see the trader. Of course, the trader’s offers come one after the other, so even if he makes you a good proposal you want to go through all of them, so the conversation will go like this :
Hello friend, what do you want to trade ?
[P]ylates
How many ?
10
Would you trade for 40 Microbes ?
[N]o
Would you trade for 13 Vhiolans
[N]o
What would you like to trade then ?
M[icrobes]
How many ?
40
For extra frustration, if you start typing a number and stop for a couple seconds (eg to count the number of zeros for large numbers), the game proceeds and you cannot come back (the “matter” on this type of good will be “settled” at the end of the interaction)
Terrible trading interface on a game 100% about trading is really not great.
On another matter, when you plan to travel to another system, the game does not tell you in advance “you don’t have enough fuel for that voyage“. If you start the voyage, you will be stranded and lose. If you want to know if you can make it, you need to use the ship’s computer.
Final note : the game has a register of all the trades offered to you… but really what you need is the price according to the fuel cartel, not the price according to the local traders :
Overall, really poorly designed even though there were so few menus.
C. Systems
How the game works should be pretty clear at this point. Something frustrating is that playing the game as designed is a sure way to lose. In particular, the manual says this :
It says it is better to buy fuel with cash. The problem with “buying fuel with cash” is that the only way to have cash is to sell your goods on Galactica, which you don’t want to do because let’s be honest no one likes being murdered.
The assassination seems to have been added at the last possible moment, maybe to prepare for Galactic Revolution. In my opinion, this harmed the game.
D. Scenario design& Balancing
Not much to say. I appreciate playing in the same universe as Galactic Empire. I also appreciate the fact that prices are really distributed according to the distance to the world which, presumably, produce the goods :
This means that prices on the edge of the galaxy tend to be either very high… or very low. It is probably a viable strategy to stock up on something, anything, travel as far as possible and hope for the best.
Small note : you can choose the difficulty of the game when you launch it (I suppose it impacts how much prices vary). I chose difficulty 5 out of 9.
E. Fun & Replayability
I am not the target audience, certainly, but I believe it is objectively a bad game. The Data Driven Gamer seems to have hated it as well (in his comments on Galactic Empire).
I played Galactic Trader because I have this compulsion to never play the later installments of a series without playing and finishing the earlier one, but at this point I will proceed to Galactic Revolution while assuming that Galactic Trader never happened, or if it happened it happened to some associate of De Buque who will secretly finance his coup in Revolution.
Contemporary Reviews
There are very few reviews on Galactic Trader, and those few reviews are almost always reviews of the Galactic Saga as whole, where most of the space is allocated to Galactic Empire, and whatever is left allocated to Galactic Trader and maybe Galactic Revolution. In general, all the praise are for the former, the two later only receive a quick description. Due to this, I have an hard time determining what contemporary reviewers thought of this game, except maybe that it was not as exceptional and worthy of long reviews as Empire.
But there is one exception : the 1982 Book of Apple Softwares separated the different Galactic Saga games. The verdict on Galactic Trader : “It just isn’t that interesting of a game.”
Fibonacci/Galactic Trader
The Galactic Trader can be combined with the Fibonacci Trader program , the First Multiple Time Frame Trading software, to create a powerful technical and planetary trading and research package. The combination program provides you with all of the tools from both software packages combined into one incredible program.
- Publisher: Fibonacci Trader Corp.
- Home page:www.galacticinvestor.com
- Last updated: January 20th, 2010
Fibonacci Trader
Fibonacci Trader is a true multiple time frame analysis software package for professional traders. All charts have the capacity to plot indicators on three different time frames, which enables traders see what weekly and daily indicators are displaying compared to their intraday indicators on the same chart, all real-time.
- Publisher: Fibonacci Trader Corp.
- Home page:www.fibonaccitrader.com
- Last updated: May 1st, 2008
Fibonacci Solution to mGlider project converter
For starters, mGlider is developed by the same team who brought you Fibonacci Solution - a premium software for Fibonacci traders. In fact, mGlider succeeded Fibonacci Solution to become our flagship product. While offering extra capabilities, it retained and enhanced all Fibonacci tools found in Fibonacci Solution where they were forged for two years.
- Publisher: Solution Realm Software Inc
- Last updated: February 15th, 2010
Time Trader
Time Trader is a charting system which is designed to provide investors and market technicians with the most easy and straight forward way to undergo Gann style time and price analysis and certainly for quick investment decisions. In this software, there is included several applications in relation to Gann, Fibonacci and geometry theories of market
- Publisher: Acrotec System Ltd.
- Last updated: November 14th, 2011
Smugglers 4
Smugglers 4 is a turn-based science-fiction space trading game. You have the option to be a greedy trader, an ambitious bounty hunter, a ruthless pirate and your actions will ultimately have an impact on the galactic scale. You will even be able to board enemy ships and conquer star systems commanding large battleships.
- Publisher: Niels Bauer Games
- Home page:www.nielsbauergames.com
- Last updated: December 3rd, 2009
Fibonacci Lines Analyzer
The Fibonacci lines analyzer shows Fibonacci retracement, expansion Levels , Fibonacci Arcs, Fibonacci spiral, Fibonacci Time Zones and Gann fan presenting result in graphical form.
- Publisher: Fibonacci lines software
- Home page:fibonacci-trading-software.info
- Last updated: May 27th, 2020
System Fibonacci
Excellent looking charts with Fibonacci Arcs and Trends. Download historical prices for free as provided by Yahoo Finance to create sophisticated charts with candlesticks, lines, price points and even zigzag lines.
- Publisher: Jigaro Software
- Last updated: May 27th, 2020
iDownloader - FX
Galactic Trader Twitter
Features:-iDownloader is a freeware offered to public-It is designed to help users download end-of-day forexs chart. You do not need to subscribe to historical data provider, it's free! You can build historical chart of three types: Line, Bar and Candlestick. Historical data available is up to: 24 months for daily charts; 4 years for weekly charts; 10 years for monthly charts. And again: you don't need to pay for that data feed! Once the historical chart built you can simply drag-and-drop data from the chart into input fields for further calculation. Depending on the trend (up or down) the Calculator grabs High or Low of the specific date and uses that data for further calculation. That insures the most precise result and prevents user error. When the Fibonacci Numbers calculated Retracement and Expansion Levels will be drawn over the chart providing you with the most convenient output. You can draw a specific Level or all the Levels. You can download fully functional trial version of the Fibonacci Calculator. You will be able to run the application 10 times. If you decide to keep using it, you will need to purchase the license.
- Publisher: Trader Software
- Last updated: March 19th, 2008
Charts2Win
Update real time data for Amibroker, Metastock, MetaTrader4 & Ninja Trader simultaneously with Charts2win softwareMain features;- 1000+ symbols supported.- Intraday high speed Real Time Data with zero delay.- Backfill for 60 Days in 1Min format available for all Equity, Futures, Options, Commodity, Agri Commodity and Currency.
- Publisher: Charts2Win.com
- Home page:www.charts2win.com
- Last updated: July 3rd, 2015
Interstellar Trader 2
A strategy/simulation trading game where you become an outer space merchant, traveling from planet to planet in the galaxy, buying and selling from over 200 different items. Become a galactic trader!
- Publisher: Stormcloud Creations
- Last updated: July 11th, 2010
J2SE Runtime Environment Update
JRE provides libraries, Java virtual machine, and other components necessary for you to run applets and applications written in the Java programming language. Once installed you won´t notice it. JRE is free to download, install and deploy, and all the related documentation can be found at http://www.sun.com.
- Publisher: Oracle
- Last updated: August 31st, 2011
Dell Update
Dell Update is a Windows program that automatically updates critical fixes and important device drivers on Dell computers and laptops. This ensures that your computer has the most critical updates without you having to check online and install them yourself.
- Publisher: Dell Inc.
- Last updated: June 23rd, 2020
Galactic Trader 4 Pc
Intel Driver Update Utility
Intel Driver Update Utility allows you to scan your computer for outdated drivers and patch them using the latest up-to-date drivers available from Intel. It's a handy tool that keeps your Intel drivers up-to-date and in top shape, ensuring that the Intel drivers won't cause any problem to your system.
- Publisher: Intel
- Home page:downloadcenter.intel.com
- Last updated: June 23rd, 2020
- Publisher: Samsung
- Home page:www.samsung.com
- Last updated: July 2nd, 2020
Update for Microsoft Office Infopath 2007 Help (KB963662)
Microsoft has released updated Help (HxS) files for Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007. These updates contain the latest revisions and additions to Office InfoPath Help and Office InfoPath Developer Help. The update file is stored on security-enhanced servers that help prevent any unauthorized changes to the file.
- Publisher: Microsoft
- Last updated: October 26th, 2011
Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 Update 4
Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 Update 3 is a package that installs runtime components of Visual C++ libraries that are required to run applications developed using Visual Studio 2012 on a computer that does not have Visual Studio 2012 installed.
- Publisher: Microsoft
- Last updated: July 3rd, 2020
Adobe After Effects CS6 11.0.1 Update
Adobe After Effects CS6, version 11.0.1, provides a number of critical fixes. Several bugs with the global performance cache were fixed, which were causing the cache to not be invalidated at some times when it should have been.
- Publisher: Adobe Systems Incorporated
- Home page:www.adobe.com
- Last updated: June 4th, 2014