Traiders

[Pec]

They are quite rare and almost never are actually useful to me. Is there a better way to go about trading. I have the comms console so im wondering if i can request a specific type of trader eg i have a lot of prisoners. Also when you call them it says you get reputation damage how can i avoid that?

[Astasia]

You can use the comms console to request caravans, you can't request slave caravans AFAIK (and they are "rare" because they stop spawning entirely after like 7 pop, you will have to find another method of selling prisoners). It costs rep to request a caravan, this isn't "damage" it's just the payment basically, you can recover that rep by giving the caravan some gifts when they arrive.

Randy is not good at sending caravans normally, he has no schedule for them and they are just another random event he may or may not trigger. Casandra and Phoebe use a caravan schedule which keeps them coming fairly consistently.

[Chip56]

Umodded: The reputation is the price you pay for one extra trader arriving. And you pretty much only can pick the faction its from and thus if its a modern or tribal trader.

If you areopen to mods there are multiple mods that allow you to change traders.
Some include bigger stock of traders in general, Trading stocks increasing with colony wealth, more traders, calling trade ships via console (paying silver for that instead of reputation) and so on.

[Veylox]

You have to send caravans rather than receive them. Actual settlements usually buy just about everything while having a really wide range of stuff to sell too. Just settle near outlanders or other high-tech factions and you're set, as long as you have a psychoid farm going on you can buy stuff way above your current research easily. Endgame armor, psytrainers, psychic lances, medicine, component, etc. Don't rely on random caravans, especially when they usually don't buy or sell what you actually need them to

[Limdood]

This won't help for an existing game, but something I do is set my game scenarios (new game, custom scenario, edit scenario) to "Set recurring event" or "orbital trader arrival" and set the interval to 15, 20, or 30 days....which will give you an extra 2, 3, or 4 trade ships per year....The ships are still randomized, but I agree that more traders could show up, so I set the game to do so.

Depending on how far you want to go, Dev mode has a button that says "replace all trade ships" which spawns 5 new orbital traders at once to instantly appear. They still leave at the normal time.

[DasaKamov]

Are "traiders" Raiders who see themselves as legitimate businessmen and women? ;)

[Jack Niggleson]

Originally posted by Astasia:

You can use the comms console to request caravans, you can't request slave caravans AFAIK (and they are "rare" because they stop spawning entirely after like 7 pop, you will have to find another method of selling prisoners). It costs rep to request a caravan, this isn't "damage" it's just the payment basically, you can recover that rep by giving the caravan some gifts when they arrive.

Randy is not good at sending caravans normally, he has no schedule for them and they are just another random event he may or may not trigger. Casandra and Phoebe use a caravan schedule which keeps them coming fairly consistently.

I don’t think this is entirely true. Anecdotally I’ve had caravans show up pretty regularly to very large colonies on randy (I only use randy). My current colony of 18 pawns gets bulk trader visits from an allied rep civil outlander union every few days or so with combat and exotic goods traders from the same faction showing up a bit more rarely. Rep seems to be the deciding factor for if and how often they show up, not population.

[brian_va]

^ slave traders are what astasia was talking about specifically, the other types still come at all populations

[Astasia]

This is the relevant code for Randy:

<mtbDays>1.35</mtbDays>
<categoryWeights>
<Misc>3.5</Misc>
<ThreatBig>1.4</ThreatBig>
<OrbitalVisitor>1.1</OrbitalVisitor>
<FactionArrival>2.4</FactionArrival>
<ThreatSmall>0.6</ThreatSmall>
<ShipChunkDrop>0.22</ShipChunkDrop>
</categoryWeights>

Trade caravans are a "FactionArrival" incident, that category also includes visitors and travelers passing through all at an equal weight. This means Randy can potentially go years without sending a caravan since he can constantly roll something other than FactionArrival and when he does roll that he could keep rolling the other two. There is no max delay between caravans with Randy, no safety net.

Casandra and Phoebe have this:

<li Class="StorytellerCompProperties_FactionInteraction">
<incident>TraderCaravanArrival</incident>
<minDaysPassed>5</minDaysPassed>
<baseIncidentsPerYear>5</baseIncidentsPerYear>
<minSpacingDays>6</minSpacingDays>
<allowedTargetTags>
<li>Map_PlayerHome</li>
</allowedTargetTags>
</li>

It's a completely isolated schedule for caravans, it doesn't compete with any other incidents, they always try to send around 5 per year with at least a 6 day gap.

As far as faction relations, they have no effect on caravan frequency beyond the requirement of having at least one non-hostile faction on the world capable of sending caravans to get caravans. Make enemies of everyone, caravans stop. Have 1 outlander faction at 0 relations, you get just as many caravans as if you had 20 ally factions.

And yes as brian mentioned it's just the slave caravans at stop at higher population.

[Locklave]

Originally posted by DasaKamov:

Are "traiders" Raiders who see themselves as legitimate businessmen and women? ;)

I have valuable wears and if you don't buy them I'll burn this settlement to the ground.

[Pec]

One other thing is there a way to lets just say cause a little accident for the traders as i have noticed i can just take there stuff if raiders kill them. Is there a way to do this without getting a reputation loss

[Vermillion Cardinal]

Originally posted by GB:

One other thing is there a way to lets just say cause a little accident for the traders as i have noticed i can just take there stuff if raiders kill them. Is there a way to do this without getting a reputation loss

Enrage a thrumbo pair/whole herd of animals and lead them over? See them about to pass by a dormant mech cluster and send someone to wake the latter up? Trigger a quest that sends hostile raiding parties within the next 15 hours? That's a few options I guess.

[Doesn't Learn From Mistakes]

Originally posted by GB:

One other thing is there a way to lets just say cause a little accident for the traders as i have noticed i can just take there stuff if raiders kill them. Is there a way to do this without getting a reputation loss

Generally their most valuable stuff is on their pack animals and those flee immediately at the first sign of trouble. I generally find it not worth the effort.

There are also mods that introduce hostile faction trader events to give you an excuse to "safely" waylay them.