Gamecloud - What will be done to improve and add to the game's trading features?

Greg Kingston - There have been significant changes made that will add hugely to the realism of the universe. Players will notice now that there are far fewer factory-owned ships buying and selling goods - rather most factories are now served by independent NPC traders, almost in a similar role to the player.

There are a wider variety of goods available now - in X2 the goods you could carry were restricted by the cargo size and capacity of your ship. In X3 this remains, however you must also have achieved a certain notoriety with a race before you can buy certain goods - they will not all be immediately available.

One of the other bigger changes players will see immediately are the new multi-functional factories - rather than have 8 different types of factory manufacturing and selling 8 different types of missile for example, there will now be a missile superstore so to speak, manufacturing and selling many types at once. This will also be the case for other goods as well.

Stations will also come in different sizes which will allow varying storage capacities - very useful but a warning - they do get quite large!