How to succeed as a trader in early game

[Ohio9]

After my first playthrough of the game as a military officer (50+ hours) originally intended to do a playthrough as a peaceful trader, seeing as how that is in the title in all, but I found it to be totally impractical, at least on hard dififculty. Here are the problems.



Every starting ship I've tried sucks for cargo running at the start of the game. They start with very small cargo capacity, and it takes a fortune to upgrade the cargo bays in order to carry more.

Your starting ship and crew suck at combat, meaning frequent encounters with pirates result in either getting your cargo stolen or getting mauled in combat. Even attempts to flee can result in taking several hits before you leave.

You don't have the proper trade permits to get high end cargo. How do you get the permits? By increasing your standing. What's the best way to increase your standing? By doing missions. Very few of the missions are just peaceful trading, so you can't limit yourself to nothing but that. You end up having to do combat related misssions, which results in having to build for that, and then just like that, my plans to work as a peacful trader go up in smoke.

Even if you do get the permits with your home faction, getting the permits for other factions is even worse. You need to find a contact that can get you the permits, do the missions, and again you just inevitably find yourself building for combat because that's the best way to get them done in order to get the permits.



Basically it seems like working as a peaceful trader is impossible, at least at first. In order to become a productive trader, you first need to

A: Spend a fortune outfitting your ship with the proper cargo bays

B. Build your ship up for combat so you can do missions, and at the very least be able to get to a point where you can flee from battle without taking too much damage.

C. Get enough permits with various factions so you can trade the high end cargo.



Getting to this point as a peaceful trader in early game seems just about impossible. The far better path seems to be spending about 15-20 hours of gameplay focusing on combat, so you can complete the missions to get the permits and survive pirate encounters without taking damage. It seems only once you have a seasoned crew, a well-upgraded ship, and many hours of gameplay to open up contacts that making a career as a peaceful trader actually becomes viable. Until then, your best best is to focus on combat, which is far more profitable then trading prior to getting the right permits.


For the record, I have no problem with this. I tend to be more combat-oriented anyway. My attempt at being a trader was just a novelty to try something new. I just can't help find it a bit odd that a game with trading in the title makes it impossible to work that as your primary profession until late in the game. Is that the case, or is there something I'm missing?

[JimmysTheBestCop]

It just requires a different way of thinking. This should help if you want to do a complete non combat play through. This is what I use in my non combat plays and I never fire a weapon.

1. the best and fastest way to get contact rep and influence is by selling intel. which avoids missions and any kind of negative rep with opposing factions

2. If you are gearing up for a complete non combat merchant campaign you must setup all of your officers/crew and ship for this cause. Have to go 100% in with everyone and everything

3. Most trading type ships have 50 cargo space and usually another large slot you can swap out to another low level cargo hold that gives you 25. I think it is only like 20-40k for Cargo Level 1 Hold.

75 cargo is a real good number early game. If you are focusing on rare trade goods you can still make 100k-300k on a single trade.

4. If you are a non combat captain and ship avoid doing any missions or story all together. Your not setup for it. You will die.

5. You must pick talents on your crew that a void getting into fights from encounters. This usually means having a Military Officer, merchant, and smuggler on board. And usually several of them. You don't want to get caught with your 1 smugglers talents on cool down. You want several of the same talents in case. They all have talents that get you out of encounters with military officers, zealots, bounty hunters, smugglers and pirates.

6. Don't get into battle no matter what. Even if you are out of talents and can't bribe if you have to surrender your cargo than that is what you do. Combat in a merchant ship is basically a death sentence.

7. You still need components and jobs that give you Escape+ chance if you do get stuck in combat. Like Spy gives you Bolt talent thats +30 escape. There is an escape module for your ship that gives I think +25 escape. Plus navigation modules. And you still need crew/officers that give you command points. This is how you escape if you actually get stuck in ship combat

8. You want a way to farm contacts. So you find contacts that sell trade permits who buy intel. You sell them intel and then buy their permits.

9. Its a good idea to try and keep positive rep with all factions. So no running mission. And you need a way to increase rep like selling intel or patrolling or using merchant talents to give rep boost or even the doctor medical boost talents to give rep boosts.

10. Before you have talents that help avoid trading into conflicts that give -rep. For example you always start in a trade ban in your home faction. So if you trade you are going to get severe rep penalty with the opposing faction(s).

When I am a trader I usually high tail it over to the Far Fallen Rim System if I am not in that faction and conduct my trading there. 2 great indy worlds that you can make a killing. And you use your merchant talents to farm contacts and then farm rep.

You need at least a handful of merchants on board. It is not enough just for your captain to be a merchant. You always need the same talents so they aren't on cool down

[Ohio9]

It just seems like all those things you brought up require a lot of money. Far more money then you get from the crappy cargo you can buy before you have the proper trade permits.

As for contacts that receive intell as payment, the best way to get intel is combat. Getting it from spying takes forever.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Originally posted by Ohio9:

It just seems like all those things you brought up require a lot of money. Far more money then you get from the crappy cargo you can buy before you have the proper trade permits.

As for contacts that receive intell as payment, the best way to get intel is combat. Getting it from spying takes forever.

But read my last 2 paragraphs. Far Fallen Rim System is just one example. It has 2 independent worlds that trade into each other. No permits needed. And you can make a killing just between these 2 planets. Then you invest in trade permits with some factions who are in the systems you are trading to expand your income.

Indy planets are huge for trading. Often overlooked

You can still make a lot without permits early game when you are buying low and selling high. Just need to find god systems and worlds. We are talking 30-60k profit one 1 haul. This is how you get the money to start getting permits. You don't even permit 4 sometimes not even 3 to start making serious space bucks.

Spying again it takes an effort. You will want a handful of spies on board with appropriate talents. And you have to pick proper planets. In about 5 minutes you can get dozens and dozens of intel.

As a merchant I never get spying from combat. I never ever even go into combat that = my death.

Most of my officers are merchant/spy combos including myself. Then I try and recruit merchant and spy normal crew as well. And usually 1 or 2 military officers for stiff salute early game.

Because the merchants entire purpose is to get contacts who have Rare Trade Goods so you always need to be firing off your contact talents. So you need many duplicates of that talent. And you want some one with RTG that buys intel. So you have to jump into the merchant/spy game full force.

Once you get to buy 75 RTG you will be making hundreds of thousands of space bucks per trade.

[Trese Brothers]

Maybe you could list some of the "crappy" trades you are making and we could help you make more money? Like everything, you've got a ladder to climb. You aren't going to make millions without pulling together enough money to make your first cargo hold upgrade or replacement. Don't worry about a lot of money until you make a little money.

Really key starting point is finding some trade triangles where you can make bank. If you not making good trades over short distances, you will definitely struggle in the beginning.

[Gilmoy]

You can bootstrap from a brand-new start to Trade Permit 4 in <1 year, with any build. I've done it for all of my numerous unlock games, even in a Juror Class boarder with only 25 cargo. (In fact, every 2-year unlock implies that you shall finish bootstrapping yourself from tender morsel to mission-ready in about 1 year flat, and then spend 52 weeks doing the unlock task. I recommend exactly that order: spend 1 full year getting strong, then go and do.)

Ultimately, you are correct that many missions will exceed your early ship type. (This is a big risk in the Faen storyline; be warned.) However, you can play as a "peaceful" trader. In fact, doing that for 1 year is exactly the way to bootstrap yourself to handle any unlock.

N.B. "peaceful" means you're a mouse, and you shall bribe, surrender, or flee from combats. Don't ever try to fight until you're ready for it on your build schedule.

1. All Contacts in your starting quadrant will welcome you with newbie missions, which involve no jumps, and are trivial things like One-Way Shipper or Return Shipping. Do many or all of those; they very soon run out, and you'll never get anything easier.

2. Those missions incidentally send you on a tour through your starting quadrant. Don't take long, direct routes that skim past unvisited systems. Always bend your route into a jagged tour of every system that's fairly close. It's OK if you end up making the total path about twice as long, if you can visit 2-4 systems along the way. Plan ahead so that you're reshaping your tour to consist of profitable legs, even if it makes you zigzag or backtrack a few times.

No jumps, no combat, no operations!

3. To trade well (with least real-time cognitive load), have, or just know, a table of all profitable trades for any two zone types, sorted by descending profitability. (I wrote mine in an Excel worksheet, commodities in rows and zones in 8 columns, and I drag the vertical split line to the right of the source zone's column, then scroll the right pane until the sink zone's column is just to the left. Then I can sweep my eye down and see the matching pairs line up side-by-side.) Of course, put the effort into doing this once and you end up memorizing a lot of the key legs.

Then you start to see the quadrant map in terms of profitable trade legs:
- factories (industrial, orbital, tradeway) => people: water purifiers and clothing
- refinery => factories: polymer ingots

4. Always haul the most expensive things you can. Don't waste a trip hauling methane fuel $13 or common foods ~$50, when you could be bringing water purifiers ~$300. Even in a Juror Class with only 25 cargo, it takes just about 1 lap of hauling water purifiers and clothing to earn $30k, which buys you Trade Permit 3.

5. You can always buy Trade Permit 1-2 from Calagan Faen as soon as you land there, since they cost only $5k total and you start the game with $7.5k minimum. Always do that! Remember to leave enough $ to buy up one full load of the most expensive thing you can afford.

As soon as you get T1/T2, start hauling your new most-expensive items instead. Click the Atlas to double-check your destination's trade law, as needed.

- factories => people: T1 luxury clothing/rations $400 law 9/8
- factories => farming: T2 crop harvesters $600 law 10
- factories => mining: T2 explosives $1k law 6
- refineries => factories: T2 ferrochromium alloy, kambrinite $300 law 10
etc.

Always use your profits to buy Trade Permit 3 (~$26k) first. Don't upgrade anything: if you earned this much with no upgrades in 8 weeks, you can just keep doing it for another 8 weeks. Then you can haul even better things:

- T3 terraforming components $3k law 8
- T3 ore extractors, gas processors $2.5k law 8

These are >1 order of magnitude better than water purifiers, which means you're running with the medium dogs now. Do this for 1/2 a lap, and promptly use your first $50k of profits to buy Trade Permit 4.

- factories => almost everybody else: T4 power generators $4k law 9

You can pull this off in your starting quadrant, with 0 jumps, 0 combats, and 0 operations, in about 20-30 weeks from scratch. In fact, you'll have to keep escalating your trade permits, because on your first lap through, you surely crushed every sink zone's market to buy water purifiers, and they don't want more. So upgrade permits, and visit them again a few weeks later, but carrying a completely different cargo type, and they'll pay high all over again. And repeat that.

~~~~~~~~

Ultimately, you're partially correct that you cannot avoid combat, so you must prepare something for it. You can actively plan to be a mouse, and build your ship to be good at avoiding range 5 damage and escaping. With a bit more work, you can be moderately good at not-getting-hit, and then you can board to win. Fortunately, it takes only about 30-50 weeks to trade up to this level of preparation. Thereafter, you can move into any other quadrant and repeat this all over again, hauling water purifiers and clothing while you appease new Contacts. Do one mission for a Prince (or sell them 1-2 batches of intel you found wherever), and poof, you can buy his Trade Permit 1-2. Choose those missions or operations wisely.

ST:F is a rough world, full of non-pacifists and xenos (and non-pacifist xenos). Peace is best maintained by being able to fight when you really need to. Yes, this means that a "pure" only-trading strategy is probably not viable, because trading can earn $ and some faction +rep, but not much Contact +rep, and so you must eventually do some other activity to make foreign Contacts approve of you.

[happybjorn]

Pure trading works even on impossible. The problem is that you wind up being rich quickly, not good at much besides trading, and nothing to spend your money on.

Some really good advice. To add to advice on Farfallen Rim, several factions have Tradeway landing Zones either in system or 1 jumpt away, a single run from the Indie Orbital to one of these Tradeways will provide 10s of thousands of credits of profit (even in a Scout Cutter).

The default map Javat start is really good for learning about cross faction trade. The default Thulun start has some amazing multi-jump trades if you have full Thulun permits. The Zenrin start is brokenly op (the most efficient internal trade routes on the default map for any start, possibly for any system. It's also right next to Farfallen Rim and the list just keeps going).

If you don't mind the time investment try any of those 3 faction for between half a year and a year of game time as a trader. You'll probably learn a lot.

[Ohio9]

Thanks for the advice guys, I'll take it all into consideration. My early problems were basically this: The money I was making from trading prior to getting a trade permit wasn't as much as I would be making from doing missions. And limiting yourself to noncombat means there are only a few missions that are viable. Sometimes they don't pop up. Without missions it's hard to get your standing up for better trade permits. Yes you can do it through intel, but getting intel through spying is really inefficient since you land the intel card like maybe 1 out of every 5-8 rolls, especially in early game when you don't have high level crewmen who good spying card talents. In the mean time, your failed rolls expose you to all sorts of hazards your low-level crew can't handle.

Then there was also the issue of combat that I couldn't avoid, in which I would get stuck on failed retreat attempts while the enemy just pounded me like a defenseless animal.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Originally posted by happybjorn:

Pure trading works even on impossible. The problem is that you wind up being rich quickly, not good at much besides trading, and nothing to spend your money on.

Some really good advice. To add to advice on Farfallen Rim, several factions have Tradeway landing Zones either in system or 1 jumpt away, a single run from the Indie Orbital to one of these Tradeways will provide 10s of thousands of credits of profit (even in a Scout Cutter).

The default map Javat start is really good for learning about cross faction trade. The default Thulun start has some amazing multi-jump trades if you have full Thulun permits. The Zenrin start is brokenly op (the most efficient internal trade routes on the default map for any start, possibly for any system. It's also right next to Farfallen Rim and the list just keeps going).

If you don't mind the time investment try any of those 3 faction for between half a year and a year of game time as a trader. You'll probably learn a lot.

Good note on the different systems. Just realize your starting faction has trade bans so you can get some severe negative rep which merchants usually don't want.

Its actually better to start as a different faction and just go to those systems to trade avoiding the bans/wars/conflicts all together.

Your merchant talents will start getting you new contacts in the new system.

Which means you can also lower contacts to D and experience to E and start with a C ship which gives you a good merchant class ship. I would still go with attributes/skills in A/B slots for a trading captain.

Lots of different ways to slice it up. But it is totally possible to avoid all combat.

[Ohio9]

Originally posted by happybjorn:

Pure trading works even on impossible. The problem is that you wind up being rich quickly, not good at much besides trading, and nothing to spend your money on.

That's why I really think this game needs a "retirement" option late-game, with a subsequent ending based on your overall wealth (counting the value of assets of all the ships you own). Right now, once you get the best ship with the best upgrades, the game is basically over. By the time you get that, you've got tons of wealth and a crew that makes you nearly unbeatable. So there really isn't much to use this super-upgraded ship you just bought for.

A retirement/ending option would give you motivation to keep building wealth even after you don't have anything else to buy for your ship.

[Seswatha]

That could be a guide, but I'll post it here. Maybe I'll make a separate post later or smth. It's a very reliable and straightforward trader strategy that allows to earn a ton of money rather safe and fast. Note that it doesn't involve any "true" trader gameplay as you'll be mostly either doing delivery quests early on or hauling rare trade goods to predefined destinations later.

Cadar Locust Trader

Map: Default (important)

Faction: Cadar. Why? On default map, only Cadar's starting system has rare trade goods (RTG). If you pick a contact with access to rare trade goods, you'll only have a chance to get RTG if they're non local with other factions. Local Cadar Smuggler or Merchant is guaranteed to sell the Kongon Locusts.

Contacts: Smuggler, Ex-Spy

Captain: Merchant, 30 CHA, 10 Negotiate, rest whatever you like. Spy is also an option if you want some Sly crewmen, but it will make your endgame triple job combo weaker.

Ship: Paladin or Galatak Freighter. They both can get 75 cargo capacity, but Paladin needs to swap the fuel tank. I personally still like the paladin bit more, medbay is expensive and helpful early on.

Strategy:

-Early game

Go into Diplomat immediately and get Winning Compromise. With your 10 negotiate this should be a good increase in your mission income. Accept delivery quests etc - basically anything that does not require combat. Do missions that don't have an opposite faction, vs indie or "alliance" conflict mission so your rep stays high. Smugglers and Ex-Spies mostly give non violent missions.

After that you should immediately rush Merchant 8 to get Righteous Profits, get Friendly Banter in the meantime, you need to start building your contact network.

Use money to upgrade barracks and get an extra officer. 5th officer should be a pure navigator, so that you can get skip off the void ASAP.

Hire spies 5-6 from your Ex-Spy contact, get Scouring Search for everyone. Get Tripple Arc Signal Array to increase intel rewards and do some spying. Sell intel to your Smuggler contact so that you'll have max level of RTG service (lowest cooldown is like 20 something weeks).

-Mid game

You should start selling RTG. The two destinations are Orion Expanse (Xenite Hive) and Alzean Core (Munaitti). The latter is easier, because it does not require a permit and is not affected by trade bans (it's an indie world). Both are 3 jumps. Neither offers a great price, but you can still make a lot of money, 500k+ per trade with the right setup.

It's risky to carry RTG around as they can be confiscated or looted. You should either wait till lvl 11 Navigator officer (so that you can always escape), or you'd need to get bolt for at least one of your spies and a bunch of lvl 1 eccm modules. Surrendering your cargo is too expensive early on.

I don't recommend investing too much into your starting ship, switch to Galatak Heavylift, it can be upgraded to have close to 300 cargo capacity when min maxed and huge flight range with decent speed (longhaul engine).

Get all the possible contact talents for all your E-Techs and Navigators (talk of the far worlds, listening post), you need to expand your network.

Be on lookout for Smuggler contact, if you can't find one you might have to make your officers Smugglers.

-Late game

Look for RTG contacts and black markets on planets that buy this type of RTG. The ones that buy intel are preferred (spy and sell intel to raise rep, patrol too if necessary - get some MOs if possible). Do the trades. You can be making 1-2m per trade at this point. You need a bunch of smugglers for Backroom Deal and one with high negotiate and Bootleg Profits (captain?).

Do whatever you want with your millions of cash.

Some extra tips:
-Talents like Talk in the Hall or Alert Scanner are a trap in this build. You only want contact talents to trigger during spicing and entering systems and if you have both it'll be random. You don't care much about rumors here (pick Static Talks if you want some rumors, you'll be spying a lot and it does not interfere with anything).
-Likewise, any talents that trigger on trade (e.g. +rep or +inter or finding a new contact) are also a trap. Bootleg Profits and Righteous Profits work on the whole sum of the deal, so with high negotiate they basically double your income from trades. You want them to trigger always, and you only want 1 copy of them on a very high negotiate character. Since you're making 1 huge trade (e.g. ~300 units of RTG) every few weeks, you don't need and don't want multiples, as you only want the one talent with the highest modifier. There are less expensive ways to get rep and intel.
-If you do want to farm Smuggler contacts, buy a big load of RTG, stash them on a wild planet near a black market and sell them in 50k batches while having Unlawful Royalty on a bunch of Smugglers. Retrain out of it later as you want only 1 copy of Bootleg Profits to work on black market trades and nothing else.
-Forged Permit & Faked Signature on several Smugglers is a good way to avoid Zealots, BH, MO. It's also a good way to farm rep as after using a few of these you get an option to "acknowledge" which increases your rep. You still need to worry about pirates and xeno. Use skip off the void for these (try not to run too low on fuel so its disabled).

[Trese Brothers]

A guide would be awesome +1

[Blinkicide]

Here's a strategy to get a trader off the ground. I usually have a rank 4 trade permit somewhere between the first 100-200 turns, big range I guess but its because my memory is fuzzy.

Anyways, at the risk of nerfage:


1. The best talent for trading is pilot's surefall. Its a level 1 talent, reduces time to land to 1. Stack pilots, like 5-7 of them at the start all with this talent. Fire your fighters, or go have them explore till they get swallowed by xenos, you'll get better fighters later.

Exploit worlds that have two landing zones and short distances trades. Without surefall you were spending most your time on landing; it takes 3-4 turns to land on many worlds -- depends on atmosphere, size etc. Moving 5 AU takes 1.5 turns on average in a galactic freighter, so you see landing time on 5 AU trades was taking you 2x-3x more time than travel for short distance trades. And when trading on worlds with two zones, you are up to 4x more efficient than you were before.

5-7 pilots actually isn't even enough, so start firing the bad ones once once their talent is on cooldown, and hire new recruits. This also lets you cycle a lot of prospects for officer positions (e.g. pilot/doctor with +6 medical).

When you got enough surefall's off cooldown hire an etech and pick the rumor talent; fire him at the next stop -- almost free rumors (becaus he still steals exp).

2. To get that rank 4 trade permit early we need to push our rep up with Calgan. Take all those same zone quests, and when you complete a Calgan's quest select the diplomatic/public spectacle completion option. It takes longer, but the quests will likely dry up in zone (and so too will the trades) if you wait to push his rep up with security check point and spice beer handoffs.

3. If you do Tip #1 and #2 well enough you'll have a few about 200-300k in your bank, a rank 4 trade permit, expanded barracks, all before you are likely see your first pirate (on impossible). This is because you are efficiently using your time, before the game starts pressuring you. Lvl is 4 is pretty dangerous because you got money and permit to make big trades, but there be a lot more pirates, and you don't have a lvl 5 talents (e.g. jettison cargo) yet or a ship capable of combat. I tend to grab two pilots and select escape talents. As your crew starts hitting lvl 5, have the navigators pickup their version of surefall, and start firing your excess pilots. Use talents like discerning glance to find quality replacements for those fighters you fired in the beginning.

[Net Warrior]

Playing on impossible, time spent becomes VERY important. Spying is time consuming. Missions are time consuming. I'm having trouble with getting the rep required to buy permits. Is this just insoluble on impossible?

[Gilmoy]

No, the preceding strategies all still work.

Impossible does impose a mild tax; IIRC all missions pay a bit less (by maybe -20%?).
So your early money is tighter. But missions and orbital ops take the same amount of time.

Do all of the easy missions (0 jumps).

Then do the Faen-Char diplomat missions.
Trade with the Char while you're visiting their system and they don't hate you yet.

Then do a 2nd mission tour.
Come home around year 5, and you should have $1.0M to buy the 2nd ship.

I prefer early patrols instead of spying, but either way it's an orbital op. Time is always important, so you must judiciously balance the opportunities with your other deadlines. I try to squeeze in 1 patrol every 4 weeks to take 1 shot at my Commanding Sweep jackpot for +f.rep, roughly as fast as it cools down. It consumes about 1/2 week every 4 weeks, so about 8.0 weeks per year, for 3-4 jackpots, plus all of the incidental +f.rep from Pirates and Smugglers cards. This trick can offset almost all of the Faen-Char rep loss from mission steps, so that the Char faction (usually Rychart) still loves me and sells me fuel.

Most of your money actually does come from mission steps. Early trades won't earn you $40k in 2 weeks. Hence I advocate that you think of ST:F as a succession of mission-tours, and trading is an incidental thing you do en route whenever it fits.

[Net Warrior]

Gilmoy,
Thanks for the detailed answer. Lots of food for thought here. I was avoiding those Faen Diplo missions but in my current playthru I'm only on week 38 and have a mere $65k so I'll give them a try. Also, one patrol talent and use it upon cool down...nice plan.