Trade Ranks

[buffy805]

I know that we gain trade ranks as we buy wares in stations.
So Mk3s and non self-sufficient stations resupply with CAGs are a good way to gain trade ranks automatically.

But which wares to buy ?
It seems I gain nothing, not even 1%, when I buy a 20 millions cr station, or 10 lasers at 600.000 each...

And how does it work ?
More expensive wares (Silicon Wafers at 252 credits) seems better than E-Cells at 12credits to gain trade ranks faster.
But is it even better to buy Silicon Wafers at 600cr, or is it worse in the objective to gain trade ranks (the game estimating this would be a bad trade) ?

Has anyone specific details on how it works precisely ?

[Fedora01]

I'd recommend instead of focusing on finding a way to cheese it (which would still take forever), just keep expanding. The more you buy/sell the more your trade rank goes up naturally and the more money you have. With that said the more money you have the more you can expand, etc... ect... If you haven't already, I'd recommend starting up ore mines on just about every good astroid you find in safe sectors. I'd also recommend setting up some teladianium foundries in Paranid space, their food stations eat that stuff up.

[Ketraar]

My aproach is to try and fill gabs in regional economies, by building stations that then complement the local stations and make use of their low cost wares, like energy and ore, both the NPC produce at a loss compared to player prices. having then dedicated CAGs that buy and sell stuff to NPCs makes both my trade rank and race relations go up steady.

As Fedora sugested, if you keep expanding it will grow naturaly and wont require any cheese (unless its mozzarella on a pizza).

MFG

Ketraar

[musoyama]

I just reached X-Treme Trader. Started off with STs in every sector and then tried abut 100 UTs (all Mistrals and Springblossoms). They all eventually get stuck with an unsellable cargo - usually Ore or Silicon Wafers. Then I fixed economies as mentioned elsewhere. I also built XL SPP hubs wherever there was a shortage of energy. In addition I built about 200 NPC requested stations. Eventually I got to grips with CAGs (took me ages to figure them out) and then switched off all NPC trading with my stations and just used the CAGs to push my products. Another thing I did was drop an HQ in Gunnes Crusade and had 20 Springblossom CAGs buy food at low prices. I then built corresponding food factory HUBS, CLS ships transferred the food from the HQ to the HUBS and then more CAGs pushed the food to buyers at higher prices. Once I reached 90% PGTycoon I got really bored so cloned SpaceFlies and sold them to Split stations in the northern sectors - this pushed me to X-Treme. Not the 'cleanest' way but top rank is top rank.

[Zoran]

* First the trade rank is mapped to a point scale that goes up to 10 million. Egosoft site has this table:
http://www.egosoft.com/support/faq/faq_answer_en.php?answer=1336

* Your trade rank will go up one point for every 800cr profit. This link https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=291970
"Trade Rank, you gain one point for every 800cr you make buying below average from or selling above average to NPC stations."

* Then there is the SETA decay of trade and combat rank. Also from Egosoft site:
"If you leave the game idle for a long period of time then your fight and trade ranks will start to decay.
Your fight rank will drop by about 2% for every game hour without player input (or for every 6 minutes, on 1000% SETA), and your trade rank by around 0.25%."



Tip: 100% self sustaining complexes don't help with trade rank. Buy some items from NPCs at lowest price instead.

[buffy805]

Great answer Zoran, thanks alot

Trade Rank, you gain one point for every 800cr you make buying below average from or selling above average to NPC stations.

For example if you buy 200 units of ore at 50 credits, average is 128, so this equates to 200 x 78 (average - purchase price) = 15600 divided by 800 = 19.5 points, only 10,000,000 needed for Xtreme...

So it is all about the margin between the price of my purchase and the average price of the ware.

This will help.