Trade questions

[Stormtempter]

How do you determine what to haul?

I've been using the EDDB website for my info. I can list commodities by profit gained (lowest buy price vs highest sell price) and there are several that top out at over a 3k margin. At that point its just a matter of chosing one, and checking the station/system of the lowest price to buy, and seeing where the highest price to sell is in terms of distance in jumps and station distance from ingress point.

At one point I chose basic medicines - which had a very low buy and average price, but had a big spike at several stations - one of which was just 2 hops away, so I could make about 2.9k per ton on that run, though the return trip was next to naught, so round trip it would average about 1.5k a ton in profit.

Another time I chose palladium and it was a 3 jump hop, with a profit margin of 4k in one direction.

Yet, I see most people discussing hauling imperial slaves, despite their contraband status in so many places, and strangely enough I see a few talking about biowaste runs. According to EDDB biowaste is one of the worst commodities in terms of profit. Are these people joking, using biowaste as code to avoid revealing the true product, or just simply going by massive volume at a near nothing margin?

Why do most people choose imperial slaves and have to deal with the hassle of contraband when things like basic medicine, gold, palladium or military fabrics can net around the same profit margin, be accepted and bought by more stations and are not illegal?

Can anyone give me a primer on the trading ettiquette that makes these decisions? Is my process a good one? Should I be using some other process to determine my runs? How often do prices/quanitites/demands change - as happened to my sweet basic medicine run?

Thanks in advance for your time and input.

[Ray Robertson]

State also affects profit on specific commodities. Perhaps those stations were having an outbreak.

Stations in outbreak will pay good for medicines. Famine good for foodstuff. War/civil war good for weapons. Etc.

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

And the biowaste hauls are mission-related. Some missions pay good money for those hauls.

[Agony_Aunt]

States affect profit margins wildly so running things like medcines to outbreak systems or food to famine systems or weapons to war systems can be highly profitable.

To really take advantage of it, you either want to be in a remote location or be prepared to go as soon as the state changes, because otherwise everyone who watches the trade databases will soon learn there is profit to be made doing certain runs and will trade like crazy and kill the profit margins.

[Nerd Doodle]

Imperial slaves are not illegal inside imperial space. You can safely ferry slaves everywhere besides aisling's space, apparently she has morals.

I typically do a trade loop inside eddb. I go for the highest profit margin which is usually slaves. I go out there and just keep buying and selling slaves about 15 LYs away.

[Ingestible Bulk]

Imperial slaves are about the best you can do as long as you're willing to stick around in Imperial space to do all your trading. once you find a station that's selling slaves at 12k per and a station paying 2-3k over the GA you're never going to want to leave. I go with the imperial slaves over other goods because they tend to be pretty stable. a lot of other goods will depend on what state the system is in (famine/outbreak/boom/etc.) and the window of it being a good route could vary wildly. Prices change with player involvement and based on what systems Frontier wants to artificially put in a different state, so finding a good gold run could only be a good run for a few days or a few weeks and a lot of factors can influence it, population, economy type, initial demand, and popularity of the route. low population system that has a high demand for gold will only have that demand for 3-4 runs from a type 9, but a high population system has the possibility to not even be effected by a single trader.

[Stormtempter]

so there is no set timer on when system/station states change, or commidity prices shift? all of it is RNG?

[steve.neverslept]

TBH non-rare, non-mission trading sucks ass if you don't have a 200T+ cargo hold.

[Edelweiss ✿]

You punch in route parameters in eddb.io, and buy what it tells you to. Only a handful of items are worth trading at all

[Stormtempter]

I'm in an Asp Explorer right now with 114 tons of space. Been doing about 30ly routes of palladium since all the missions either want me to wait 20 minutes in a system to interdict someone, or run passengers around 200+ly for about 200k, or I courier some cargo for half that.

These 3-4k per ton profit commoditites seem the most efficient way to increase liquidity.

[Frank K]

The best profits are made with trading missions. You need to be allied with the faction and it has to be in a Boom state for the best take. This is where having a home system and working it comes in handy. But in general if the controlling faction of a station is in Boom those are where you''ll find the best prices, regardless of missions.

[Ray Robertson]

Originally posted by Stormtempter:

so there is no set timer on when system/station states change, or commidity prices shift? all of it is RNG?

There is no RNG wrt state changes. States are determined by player actions(or lack of) and/or influence values which are also affected by player actions. The timer on states may have an RNG element.

Commodity prices are affected by state, player trading, controlling faction type, economy type, system wealth/population and probably a few algorithms which may or may not have a little RNG.

[Stormtempter]

if we're playing solo, the state changes and commodity prices are affected by the open world still I assume? Playing solo is like playing online as a ghost?

[Ray Robertson]

Originally posted by Stormtempter:

if we're playing solo, the state changes and commodity prices are affected by the open world still I assume? Playing solo is like playing online as a ghost?

Yes, every player be it in open, private or solo affects the background simulation.

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Originally posted by Stormtempter:

if we're playing solo, the state changes and commodity prices are affected by the open world still I assume?

True.

Playing solo is like playing online as a ghost?

No, when playing solo, all other commanders turn into ghosts for you.

[bbfloyd]

I am from the Frank K school of trading. Find a nice Federal or Imperial system with a RES zone, do some RES farming and turn in bounties at local Fed or Imerial port, once you get Friendly/Cordial with that base faction, you will get silly payouts for boom delivery missions, and the more you haul and trade there, the more boom the system goes I believe. You'll also grind Fed or Imperial rank too, needed for some ship purchases.

Mining is nearly pointless until you can afford T6/AspX, follow the guides.