How to trade?

[Sitch]

I have a coms and a trader beacon but I still can't trade. Am I missing something. I have gifted over 1000 silver to the first town to bring the rep up to 100 hoping I can trade with them. That did not work. I have been in this colony for almost 2 years and the ai rarly sends me a trader and when it does it is only a tribal one not wanting any of my stuff or a slaver. I have to much stuff pilling up. RNG hates me.

[Honor's Bastion]

Trading happens in one of two ways:

1) Trade Caravans and Visitors: they will come to your colony bringing trade goods to you. To trade with them, select your best social person and right click the pawn that has a yellow question mark icon. Visitors will have very few items to trade while trade caravans might have a good but still limited assortment of items.

2) Orbital Trading: You must have a communication console and you must have at least one orbital trade beacon who's area has goods within it. The trade ships will appear randomly (they're an event) and to trade with them, just right click the comms console with your best social person to begin trade.

What you're doing is only helping your relationship with the faction that you are contacting. While that does indirectly increase the chance of trade caravan and visitors, it does not allow you to trade with them directly. High relationships only allow you to call for aid at the expense of relationship points.

[Sitch]

Okay number 2 is not working. Like i said i have a comm console and trade beacons. I have 3 of the beacons around all the supplies i which to sell. However i don't get the option to.

[Emmote]

If you read Honor's Bastion's post properly, you would have read that #2 is an event. Orbital trade ships only arrive rarely. They are not always available.

[Sitch]

Thanks, you are right i did not read it correctly. While i appriciate Honor's reply and help he was telling me things i already knew, except for the event detail, and i started skimming through his post. Thank you Honor and Emmote for ya'lls help.

[Honor's Bastion]

You can always increase the chance to get more orbital traders using this mod here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=725465444&searchtext=trade

If my memory is correct, it raises the chance of orbital traders from a 4 to 12, so tripling the overall rate to what it would have been in alpha 12 of the game, before trade caravans were introduced. Back in they were still rare, but came often enough.

[Sitch]

Thank you. I will get this eventually but first i want to win on vanilla. So i guess i'll have to suffer. Is it possible to be friendly with the pirates and trade with them?

[Emmote]

Nope.

[Sitch]

thanks