Trade players: what do you trade?

[Dyne]

I've played X3 for the better part of a decade and I've never made a particularly large amount of money. :( I started a new game yesterday and am somewhat far in it... I'm using Litcube's Universe now so I got a better start than the vanilla game but for the most part trading is the same.

I started out like I always do, energy cells and ore in Ore Belt then once I get a jump drive I start delivering mostly e-cells because you can always find a station with the lowest price. Got really lucky early on and bought a Mercury Tanker for next to nothing and made that a ST and then UT right away. It brings in about 1,000,000 an hour (while I'm using SETA on and off of course) but that's piddly.

So what do the pros here trade? I know higher tier stuff is sometimes better to trade and e-cells aren't great by any means. The reason I find myself trading them so much is because every station is out of power so I can't get any of the better trade goods. Then as soon as they start getting to a decent price the stuff gets gobbled up by AI ships. I can't win!

I finally bought myself a solar power plant M to try to get more e-cells in the economy but keeping that thing in crystals is costing me a fortune. In hindsight I should have bought a crystal fab. Oh well live and learn.

[Don]

I'm just gonna give points what I've learned in my games (vanilla):

You have to move on to complexes, since they are the big money-makers (especially missiles). It helps to have a few space fuel/weed hubs all over too (quick money makers). Keep using and adding STs/UTs and CAGs if you want to be hands off, and use CLS if you want to control the trade routes or have a fully manually set-up economy. In short: Missiles (all kinds), space weed/fuel.

Since you're playing Litcube, not really sure if these will apply, but I know that you should always invest on those that make money.

[JonVT]

A real money maker, but a bit expensive out of the gate, is setting up a self-sustaining solar power plant complex. If you get the right combination of silicon mine, crystal fab, meatsteaks, etc., you can create a complex which provides all of its own intermediary products, and create an endless supply of energy cells that you can then either sell to the open market, or restrict to only your own stations and power other facilities - like the missile complex that Don was suggesting above.

Going to edit my comment and add in this link, this is a great Station Complex calculator that I've used in the past when planning out self-sustaining complexes. Have fun!
https://joelbfant.bitbucket.io/x3/x3apocc.html

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by jkvantuyl:

A real money maker, but a bit expensive out of the gate, is setting up a self-sustaining solar power plant complex. If you get the right combination of silicon mine, crystal fab, meatsteaks, etc., you can create a complex which provides all of its own intermediary products, and create an endless supply of energy cells that you can then either sell to the open market, or restrict to only your own stations and power other facilities - like the missile complex that Don was suggesting above. :lunar2019coolpig:

Going to edit my comment and add in this link, this is a great Station Complex calculator that I've used in the past when planning out self-sustaining complexes. Have fun!
https://www.poisonedparanid.com/storage/mirrors/x3apocc/

Don't think it's working. I put in the parameters of a dream farm complex but nothing is showing.

[JonVT]

Try the new link I posted in my original comment. I found the same issue, and hunted down a link that worked. :-)

[Dyne]

Originally posted by jkvantuyl:

A real money maker, but a bit expensive out of the gate, is setting up a self-sustaining solar power plant complex. If you get the right combination of silicon mine, crystal fab, meatsteaks, etc., you can create a complex which provides all of its own intermediary products, and create an endless supply of energy cells that you can then either sell to the open market, or restrict to only your own stations and power other facilities - like the missile complex that Don was suggesting above. :lunar2019coolpig:

Going to edit my comment and add in this link, this is a great Station Complex calculator that I've used in the past when planning out self-sustaining complexes. Have fun!
https://joelbfant.bitbucket.io/x3/x3apocc.html

Yeah that's what I was originally going for but forgot that solar power plants aren't the base of the chain like they are for the AI, so now I don't have the money to buy the crystal fab or silicon mine. I made some progress today though: added a second UT and got a station agent (litcube thing) trading for my solar power plant. It's still making piddly profit because of how much I have to spend on crystals, but at least now it's hands off. Also started playing with the stock exchanges but only made about 500k in several hours. I'll keep heading toward the complex route.

[Mistfox]

I never got the hang of the exchange, kept losing credits so I gave up and focused on building complexes.

Got a bit of a problem with the buying and selling though. The "intermediate products" selling and buying is too drastic, you either end up buying or selling all the products or none at all.

For example, my power plants are generating too many energy cells so I want to sell them. Unfortunately they are an "intermediate product" so they are batched with other things like my nostrop oil and crystals so when I put the settings to "sell", everything ends up being swiped.

It's even worse with the HQ. It only has an "on/off" setting (Allow other aliens to trade with this station). I was trying to buy space flies for the mission when setting it on got every trader flooding in to swipe my ship construction material and setting the prices high to drive them away simply caused everyone to flood in trying to sell me overpriced goods.

Is there an individual lockout for items to stop them from being sold to outsiders?

[Red Spot]

Honestly I do not tend to trade manually. Why would you? It is boring!!! :D
I tend to scout and do some minor missions, try to build some minor hub like a Teladianium hub for say 86million. (You can fit a nice hub in Light Water, selfsufficient and with 3 CAG's keeps selling all stock.)
Eventually set up a MK3-nursery for 52million. (Three Worlds is my fav sector for this. Very safe, not in the way, but again central enough. This will train 2 MK3's at a time in no-time at all to lvl10.)
Or invest in an 'IBL-Support' hub to support all 4 IBL-forges. (Weavers Tempest, 41million, keeps making money and helps you obtain IBL's.)

When you have some of these hubs build you can earn a lot for the next hub while you drag asteroids though a sector for the current hub. Specially if you do the nursery hub early on and set 50 MK3's to make you money .. loads of it.

When you have a bit more I suggest looking at Gunne's Crusade. It has a great set of rocks to build a vast Weed-hub. (354Million, but you never have to trade any weed manually, it sells itself :))

Add a lasertower hub in Seizewell (only 195million) and you would not even need to build any more or trade anything as you make good money with just these hubs and the attached MK3's.

Edit: do not sell energy. The AI can do so much cheaper and in effect has energy for free, if anything, buy cheap from the AI and sell it expensive. I myself however do not trade anything but end-tech (weapons, shields, missiles, drones, lasertowers and 'high tech' (quantum tubes and the likes)) and leave the rest for the MK3's to sort out.

Edit2: A real money makes and great support for both the AI and myself is a vast hub set up in Barren Shores. It makes huge amounts of fighter drones, adv satellites and Drones MK2 (last are for personal use as they do not sell). Will set you back about 607million though and needs at least 2 CAG's to sell efficiently.

[Mistfox]

I did a huge complex in Aldrin, mostly for the basic food materials for my rare shipbuilding. I got a huge complex next to my shipyard churning out Taladianium, Computers, Microchips, Tubes, Crystals and Ore. And lasertowers, was planning a defensive net until I found out they suck so I keep them around to farm plasma beams in the future. They chug out about 4-5 million an hour provided I don't overcharge and scare the alien traders away.

[Dyne]

Originally posted by Red Spot:

Honestly I do not tend to trade manually. Why would you? It is boring!!! :D

There are certainly more actively engaging ways to play X3 but I prefer trading while doing other stuff around my room, lol. To me X3 is like a minimal attention game. That's what's cool about it... you can play it that way or you can be a fleet commander taking over the universe. The rest of your post has some great tips. I have heard that trading high tech is the way to go I'm just not really sure how that chain works yet and I run into a similar problem with other higher tech factories... they never have enough output for the price to be decent. I'm going to work on that today though.

Originally posted by Lonely care bear:

When I play LU I just concentrate on picking up abandoned ships. There are few sectors where you can find a ton of them. Its easier to claim one ship and make 2 millions selling it than set up a station, provide wares to it and wait 2 days to make you 2 million. Also, you should not SETA that much in LU. OCV and Phanon will make a big progress if you SETA a lot.

Do you know which sectors those are off hand? I haven't seen an abandoned ship once in my current game and it's been a few days. I don't go into the more dangerous sectors though which I'm sure is what you're referring to. :) I need a better ship than my discoverer!

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by Dyne:

Originally posted by Red Spot:

Honestly I do not tend to trade manually. Why would you? It is boring!!! :D

There are certainly more actively engaging ways to play X3 but I prefer trading while doing other stuff around my room, lol. To me X3 is like a minimal attention game. That's what's cool about it... you can play it that way or you can be a fleet commander taking over the universe. The rest of your post has some great tips. I have heard that trading high tech is the way to go I'm just not really sure how that chain works yet and I run into a similar problem with other higher tech factories... they never have enough output for the price to be decent. I'm going to work on that today though.

Originally posted by Lonely care bear:

When I play LU I just concentrate on picking up abandoned ships. There are few sectors where you can find a ton of them. Its easier to claim one ship and make 2 millions selling it than set up a station, provide wares to it and wait 2 days to make you 2 million. Also, you should not SETA that much in LU. OCV and Phanon will make a big progress if you SETA a lot.

Do you know which sectors those are off hand? I haven't seen an abandoned ship once in my current game and it's been a few days. I don't go into the more dangerous sectors though which I'm sure is what you're referring to. :) I need a better ship than my discoverer!

During the Shady Business quest, I got the Arrow and Starburst racing ships. I manufactured them and tricked them out with duplex and mineral scanners and explorer software and simply order them to map a sector. Minimal attention needed, they'll map it all for you at 1000+ m/s. Works wonderfully with those "scan the asteroids" quests too, you can get a million easily for a few minutes of "attention" (or lack thereof).

[Dyne]

I have been buying and selling a lot of damaged ships, that's really the only reason I have money! Haha. I'll go hunting for abandoned ships once I get a ship that can survive combat. Thanks for all the tips, everyone. This is a great start.

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by Dyne:

I have been buying and selling a lot of damaged ships, that's really the only reason I have money! Haha. I'll go hunting for abandoned ships once I get a ship that can survive combat. Thanks for all the tips, everyone. This is a great start.

Ironically, sometimes a "combat start" is not the best way to start things. I remember in TC, the first thing I did was sell off my starting ship and its weapons (a sabre if I recall correctly), bought a TS and tricked it out and hauled my ass off the first day. By day 2 I made enough to buy and outfit ANOTHER sabre and I had the TS as an extra to boot.

Sometimes, to get a good start, you got to work sideways to the game.

[Don]

It's really about gameplay preference. Those who enjoy combat would rather go pirating at the start or do quick combat for salvage and loot. Traders would rather go the economic route with trading, mining or missions. You can't say one way is best based on what you prefer, coz in sandbox X3 there are lots of paths to success, and it's ultimately about what that particular player enjoys doing most.

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by Don:

It's really about gameplay preference. Those who enjoy combat would rather go pirating at the start or do quick combat for salvage and loot. Traders would rather go the economic route with trading, mining or missions. You can't say one way is best based on what you prefer, coz in sandbox X3 there are lots of paths to success, and it's ultimately about what that particular player enjoys doing most.

Oh, it's not that I prefer the trader route, there was rumours that your fight rank influences the enemy's chance to bail out and at the start, it is low so it's low efficiency to hope someone bails. Then there is the ship. Even if you manage to "convince" someone to drop his cargo without getting yourself killed either as a pirate or by his escort, what you can haul back is limited by the cargo bay of your starting fighter. I took one look and thought that way was a dead end for now so went all out with the hauling. Once I got properly kitted out, THEN I went taking the kill missions. Very often people will try to half/half it, haul with their fighter and its small cargo hold, or go straight to hunting in less well kitted out fighters and make their lives harder than it should.

Money first, kit up, THEN go hunting. Step by step. Once you get a good fighter kitted out, go wild.

[Dyne]

Originally posted by Mistfox:

Ironically, sometimes a "combat start" is not the best way to start things.

Did you mean a combat start IS the best way? I can actually see that because if you start off with an expensive ship you can buy a decent TS by selling it. I think that the devs kind of balanced the starts though, as far as money goes.

Originally posted by Don:

It's really about gameplay preference. Those who enjoy combat would rather go pirating at the start or do quick combat for salvage and loot. Traders would rather go the economic route with trading, mining or missions. You can't say one way is best based on what you prefer, coz in sandbox X3 there are lots of paths to success, and it's ultimately about what that particular player enjoys doing most.

Right, I've played both ways (the games been out for so long!) and I enjoy both but right now I am focused on dominating the game economy through trade (or trying). Once I can afford a Nova I'll probably start doing combat while my UTs and stations make me more money so I can expand more.