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Just look at the prices and buy when its low, and sell when it is higher than you bought it for. Sometimes you have to travel to another system to sell those things you bought at a great price.
On top of all that, until you get a ship with lots of cargo space, and the expensive cargo expanders, you will not be able to make any kind of profit from trading.
And thus, the need for large cargo space, to store all the low cost goods until you can find a decent place to sell them.
But there are some events that cause some trade items to go up or down. Like the pirates, convoys, and other special fleet operations you can see on the map (special icons for each).
The game is not centered around trading, or mining, as neither will get you cash at the start of the game. Only fighting will.
Enjoy the life of a space trucker, keep an eye on that news board for station events, and give the next Greel you meet the double space trucker salute! Cheers, captain!
*I know capital ships don't have wheels, but, uh, "warping and shopping" only rhymes with a really awful accent.
Mostly because defense and weapons come first in this game. Or your game will be very short lived.
I also feel like trading doesn't scale well for the later game because mission payments, equipment cost, and ship cost increase so much after the first couple systems and first few ships. Trading profits can meaningfully help for part of the time in the Mk2 system - after you've got enough credits to buy a stock of one or more higher value commodity - and into the next (Mk3) system. The usefulness of pure trading is iffy by Mk4 with turrets and components each costing several hundred thousand credits, and I find that trading profits are almost a rounding error for Mk5 equipment costs (1+ million credits). Even with a big hold, my take is that the high value items simply aren't ever sold in large enough quantities at stations for trading profits to scale up to match higher value equipment costs.
That said, I've found a few things to be useful, in addition to the prior comments:
- The government type listed for each station indicates what contraband is legal at that station. It's at the bottom of the (printable) chart here - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=619586605 . Socialist government isn't listed, and, IIRC, all contraband is illegal to trade at those stations. This information doesn't tell you if the price will be relatively good or not. It is helpful, however, for knowing where you can unload contraband that you've taken after destroying hostiles. That's especially useful if you're trying to limit contraband quantity to the size of a smugglers' hold in order to stay on the good side of the militia. Not really "pure" trading, but helpful information about making money from cargo.
- As for what's a "good" price at which to buy, I find green prices to be tougher to locate than the idea of "system average" suggests. I therefore think of a good price to buy as being something like 70% or less of system average, *not* just any red price. I also pretty much ignore trading any item unless the average system value is at least a few thousand credits. Maybe I can make one or two useful trades on lower value items very early in the game when I have very little money, but otherwise I don't think it's worth tying up the hold space. To be clear, I'll still pick up these cheap items from destroyed ships and sell them at the next station for whatever I can get, but I won't bother taking up hold space to try to maximize value from them.
- I have found a few station events to be useful, but they're a bit tricky. The big price increases or decreases from a market event are relative to the *prior* price of each commodity at that station. A station with a famine, for example, might still have red prices for food items. (And only one food item - tachyon salt - is relatively high value.) The chart that I linked above also summarizes how station events impact prices.
With that caveat, I find a few station events are worth checking out.
Market Gluts lower prices on basically everything, and they also seem to result in both a wider range of items available and larger quantities available to buy. So it can be very profitable to go there, see if some high-value items are available for 50% or so of system average, and then buy those to sell either to traders or to another station.
Celebrations raise the price of multiple higher value items. It makes a lot of sense to check those out if you already have those items in your hold. I've also made some good money quickly by going there, verifying that the prices actually are well into green territory, and then using the "import from" information to see what other station(s) has one or more of those items available to sell. I've sometimes found the spreads are high enough that there's good money in making two or three round-trip runs before the Celebration event ends. (The spread compresses due to the pricing impact of my actions as discussed by Cookie, but the initial difference can be large enough that the spread stays positive.)
Korian Invasions are also worth checking as a place to sell since they raise every price. Looking at the invasion craft on the map also provides an idea how long this event will last (before turning into a Korian Siege, which blocks trade).
A Mining Rush can be good as a place to buy since that event lowers prices on two higher-value items (meteoric diamonds and gold).
An Archeological Find can mean one or more low-priced Alien Artifacts. If you have the capital to buy them, that can be a very high profit without taking up much hold space. That's a really good item to follow the strategy of dropping other cargo to force a trader to buy at the generous price that a trader will offer.
If you're lucky enough to find the combination of a Market Glut at one station and Korian Invasion or Celebration at another, that can be a very lucrative combo. I find that it can make sense to take a break from missions and focus on trading those events while they last.
The caveats are that (1) you have to wait for these events to appear, (2) some of these station events won't be of use to you if you are hostile to the Red Devils and therefore can't access their stations, and (3) sometimes a station event won't mean a particularly good buying or selling price because of the pre-event "baseline" price.
TLDR: I find trading most useful as a side activity in the first couple systems. I focus on completing missions, but when stopping at a station check both the commodity market and the newsboard to see if there's money to be made trading.
Anyway thanks for posting all that. One of the most frustrating things I've found about the game is lack of information: There's no database of information on the factions, government types, or ships, And there really should be.
It would also be nice if the trading system was more self-explanatory like it is in Wing Commander privateer.
You're welcome, and I'm also relatively new to this game. Just got it earlier this year. I definitely found this forum and other online searching to help a lot. I feel a bit dumb that in two play-throughs I didn't notice that station government type impacts what contraband is legal, for example. It is counterintuitive, though, that Citizens vs. Outsiders vs. Red Devil Cartel apparently has no impact on the legality of contraband at a station.
I enjoy the game, but I share the frustration that trading could have been so much better. Think that the developers had some good ideas for it, but could have lowered the impact of both (1) the player buying/selling a few goods at stations and (2) random volatility. Buying pure water at a Glaciated planet and selling it to a Desert planet should stay a reliable moneymaker for many trips, for example, even if the price differential narrows and the availability of the product at the source declines and takes time to replenish. As it stands, those sorts of price differentials don't seem at all consistent, even in the absence of events listed at the newsboard. A better UI for accessing price information would also help, of course.
And when doing the 'Merchant' missions where you have to find the cargo to deliver, suddenly that cargo is completely gone from every single station in that system, and even going to another system, you rarely find that cargo. If feels like 'forced rarity' and the only way to get the cargo is to destroy enemy ships and slowly pick them up. Besides the rare case where you might find a couple in a faraway system station.
That is what I call "Stupid difficulty". And I hate stupid difficulty in games, just for the sake of making it harder.
Indeed, I find it hilarious that I'm routinely selling illegal goods at militia stations. You'd think the guys who want me dead because of that single bottle of Narco-cola in my hold wouldn't be so happy to buy my contraband on their bases.
Yeah it's absurd you can't look at the galaxy map when you are on a station. Also I hate how all the bases in the game are just space stations. They should give you the ability to land on planets and do business there too.
Yeah I've never done even one of those. They never seem worth the effort.