How to make money trading

[Old Crusty]

This is how I make Reals in NA. I capture or buy Trader brigs until I find the ones that has a +1 speed modifier or better. I like to use 2, but if you want to use your Captains skill points to be able to have more ships in fleet then you can use as many as 4 at a time. Why Trader brigs and not Indiaman? Most of the trade goods I find sell best in the Bahamas. Not all, but I find that the most profit comes from there.
You must explore the map. Start by doing Admiralty cargo and passenger missions. Before you set sail decide upon a route you will take. Ports that are your Nations, and open ports that belong to other Nations will have missions available. Your goal is to find ports that drop a lot of trade goods while making a little profit on the Admiralty dime.. When you find a port with a lot of trade goods to buy, write each one down with the quantity and the cost. These ports are all over the map.
Now you have to get familiar with the trader tool in the map. Open your map and hit trader tool. A search window opens up and you will type in the first trade good on your list. As you type, different trade goods will come up and you just need to pick the proper one. once selected a drop down menu will appear with every port in the game. There are several columns in the window. Port Name, A, P, C, Distance. and buy and sell prices. Click on the C and the window will arrange itself with the ports that Consume that trade good at the top of the list. There will be a white dot under the C to indicate that those ports consume that product. You will then see in line the distance to those ports and the sell price you can expect. Like I said before, I find that there are more goods that sell for better prices in the Bahamas. Write down the weight of the goods and 1 or 2 ports that it sells for the best price then move on to the next trade good.
When you are done recording the information it is time to get out the calculator. use this formula; S=sell price, P=purchase price, and Q=quantity. (SxQ)-(BxQ)= profit. Write that down, You will notice a few things. Some trade goods are not worth your time. For example if there are 200 Color televisions that cost 500 to buy and the best sell price you can is 550, then it is not worth your time. The weight also is very important. Most goods have a weight of 5, although there are goods that can weigh a lot more. Those are usually high profit items. The consuming ports will all vary in sell price and of course distance to travel.
When your list is completed, buy the items that you can sell for the best profit. Sometimes you will find that there is a high profit item but there are only a few to buy. You can buy those goods and store them up in your warehouse until you have enough to make the trip worth it. Map out your route. Try to use safe zones as much as possible, and when out of the safe zones pay close attention to any sail you see. Be ready to run if you see an enemy player. You don't have to sell in the same trip that you are buying goods, you can store then in your warehouse for another time.
This method is time consuming the first few times you do it, but if you are making good notes on where the most profitable items are dropping then you will save yourself a lot of time on future trade trips. I hope this helps. This isn't the only way to trade but it works for me. If anyone has more ideas and suggestions please let us know.

[Shivra]

This is probably the only true way for trading in this moment but the bigest problem in this game is, the game actualy dont have any trading sistem. In this game you dont have a singel town who will produce trading goods and is probably the only game on the whole gaming world in last 20+ years with this stupidity.

[michel_medieval]

^^
And that is why there are facilities like the workshop to transform those resources ...

[Shivra]

Originally posted by michel_medieval:

^^
And that is why there are facilities like the workshop to transform those resources ...

No offence but do we play the same game? The only trading goods you can produce is Tobaco in 5 towns. All other facilities are for food and wood. To build this facilities you have limited numbers and if you build this you cant build all others and the profit from this wood facilities is 5%-15%, but first you must play 12h/day 20+ days you actualy can evan build this few wood facilities and you also need a biiiiig luck to get blueprints for woods.
When we talking about traiding and traiding goods is this game like a empty paper.

[michel_medieval]

Workshop, Academy; you can make stuff with those.
As well as shipyards of course.
The New World was mostly producing resources (wood, sugar, cotton...),
manufactured good were imported from Europe for the most part.
You can make a tonload of reals by buying some items (ex. ivory, pearls...),
fill a ship, and go sell that stuff; you wont need 12h/20+ days to do that.

If you wood like to submit ideas as to what could be added, please do so, it can only help :)

[Shivra]

I think we realy dont play the same game :), all trading items in any town come from players who sell it but first thay must sink trading ships and this ships are like 1 on every 200 battels ships and this is not trading sistem/mecanic. With wood, suger, cotton, coal, iron,... you just make items for upgrading and building ships and we all know how many ships you can actualy build in one day and what you need to do for realy low profit if you selling this ships. I didnt sad you cant make money in game but i sad the game dont have trading sistem and is the only game in last 20+ years with so poore and stupid "mecanic".
On the end is the bigest stupidity thay say is this game something about simulation. All thing at that time was about trading and not in sinking the ships. In history was more ships sink becouse wather then from sea fights. Pirates didnt sink ships but attack them for goods and profit. All other countrys was all about trading. War shis are coming becouse war betwin Spain, England and France and not becouse of pirates.
With last patch devs kill boarding sistem, on sea you can see only 1 trading ship on every 200 battel ships and some players still think is this game some kind of simulation game.
And if i talk about simulation, ships at that time are make 3-4 shoots/min in this "simulation" we can shoot only ones!!!!!!
This game is everything else just simulation not.

[Shivra]

If you realy could help with what to change in game about trading, i have many ideas but if i will wright it here i must know you can realy make something to change game mecanic, if not is just waste of my time.

[Kitt]

@ Old Crusty, thanks for the words of wisdom and a no-nonsense approach to trading. My style is different as in I have a few Rotterdam's in addition to Trader Brigs... My trading is done on the Peace server exclusively. At least you've brought something to the table for all those interesting in trading can use as a template. More so than the the "Holy F**K" character of another thread. Ha!, seems he wants online and computer trading in the 17 and 18th centuries, seriously(?)