Pirate Commodity Trader with Bleach

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(Redirected from PCTB)

This is a third-party tool developed by Puzzle Pirate player(s). It is not created, supported, or endorsed by Three Rings, so players use it at their own risk. For a list of third-party tools and things to remember for your safety when using third-party tools, see the category.

Pirate Commodity Trader... with Bleach! (PCTB) is a third party tool for collecting, sharing, and analyzing data on commodity prices around the oceans. It can be used to find profitable trading voyages, help set dockside buy and sell prices for a shoppe or stall, and plan gem runs. It is maintained by Gorondo.

The tool consists of two separate components:

The PPAOCR (Puzzle Pirates Automated OCR) tool, which requires Windows, is responsible for collecting and uploading data.
The PCTB website, which requires a recent browser, dynamically analyzes and displays the data.

1 Using PCTB
- 1.1 Comparison to Pirate Commodity Trader
  - 1.1.1 Similarities
  - 1.1.2 Differences
- 1.2 Tutorial
  - 1.2.1 Finding a profitable route
  - 1.2.2 Working out the right cargo for a route
2 Known Issues
3 External Links

Using PCTB

To upload data into PCTB, use the OCR/Upload client. Instructions and download link are available on the PCTB website.

To view and analyze the data, surf the PCTB website. The website currently has the following pages:

Summary: A summary of all possible trade routes.
Route: Detailed information on a selected trade route.
Commodities: Buy and sell prices of a selected commodity.
Bid: Market harvest bid prices.
Data Age: The time since someone last uploaded market and bid data.

Comparison to Pirate Commodity Trader

Similarities

PCTB has an upload client which uploads data to a shared database. As such, it is prone to tampering by a malevolent user. Traders have a strong incentive to upload new data, since trading requires up to the minute market information.
Both OCR clients are based on Ouroborus's OCR tool.
The pages on the PCTB website are based on Commodity Trader tabs, and the usage pattern is similar.

Differences

PCTB is not implemented in Java, rather the various components are in C++, PHP and Javascript.
The downloadable client is only responsible for data collection, data is viewed on a website.
The summary tabs are combined into one page, which gives more options for selecting routes.
The summary page doesn't display mass/volume as fractions of a ship.
The island tab, now the route page, contains boxes for selecting trades. Statistics (profit, capital, mass, volume) of the selected trades are shown. Optionally, PCTB will keep track of the capital and storage space available, and warn you when selected trades exceed available resources. This can be used to select the most profitable trades, or those that will fit on your ship.
The harvest bid price query mechanism is completely different. The bid page does not show where to sell a given commodity; this can be found with the Commodity page.
Gem Run and Shop Tool tabs have no equivalent in PCTB.
Islands and oceans are added automatically in PCTB. The server scans YPPedia to verify uploaded data.
The code for PCTB is freely available.
PCTB is undergoing active development.

Tutorial

Finding a profitable route

To find a profitable route

Go the Summary page and select the Ocean on which you are sailing from the top left drop down.

You can achieve different goals by selecting different combinations from the four drop downs, below are some examples.

Select Whole Ocean for all four drop downs. This will show you all the profitable routes for that Ocean
Select the same Archipelago in both the From and the To, this will show you all the profitable routes for that Archipelago
Select the island in the From at which your ship is currently at.
Select an island in the To which you are planning to sail to.

Once you have selected your desired combination click Search and it will bring up a list of profitable routes. Sort by return on investment descending by clicking on ROI. Usually you will want to ignore any that have a low Profit. Click on one of the lines that has a high profit and ROI, this will then take you to the Route page.

Working out the right cargo for a route

On the Route page.

Click on the plus next to Selected Trades.
Select your ship type from the radio box Ship.
Enter the amount of PoE that is going to be invested on this cargo run into Available Capital
Enter the Total mass: from Inspect the Hold into Stock Mass
Enter the Total volume: from Inspect the Hold into Stock Vol
I sort by ROI (return on Investment) in descending order and click Find profitable trades.
Then uncheck or adjust the amounts (usually by removing the lowest ROI or if you have limited space, those with a low Profit/Mass, Profit Volume) until you have no pink highlighted lines or amounts.

Then you will have the perfect cargo for your ship and budget.

Known Issues

Unable to locate target window - make sure you have the market screen open.
- PTCB does not work with the most current version of Java (1.6+). The current workaround is to install the latest version in the 1.5 series concurrently and either edit the Puzzle Pirates shortcut or create a new shortcut via the older Java version.

Version 3: Freezes when hitting one of the new commodities. The current workaround is to manually click the scroll, either up or down, this will usually kick it back into action.

Ajax responder failed with the message: "_21b is undefined" (Firefox) Diver_Down (IE)
- This message occurs when someone has used Version 4 of the upload tool that recognizes the new items AND one of these new items is profitable on the route selected. The workaround is to use Version 3 to re-upload the data so that it excludes the new commodities.