Best location for trading station?

[Maniac]

I have built one for test directly at the ring highway but barely anyone buys something.
Most of the money comes from my own traders.
I had more customers in the first location of the HQ

[eMYNOCK]

The basic Rules for a Trade Station are the very same as for normal Traders.

Buy for less than average and sell for higher than Average.


Your Station Prices can be fixed around those rough Rule and their attached Traders will act accordingly.

Anyhow, look at your own Trade Stations more as if they would be some kind of central Distribution Center for your own Traders and not as a Trade Center for others.

You want to cover as much Space as possible with your Station (that would be 5 Jumps into each direction with a 5* Manager, that means you naturally want a very central Place to build in.

Grand Exchange for example.

Once this Center is established and making Profits you might want to count 3-4 Jumps into all directions and establish more Hubs in its Vincinity... that way you can literally cover the entire Galaxy with Distribution Centers.

[BGratz]

I choosed Second contact Flashpoint (south gate of Argon prime)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2517841743
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2517841805
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2517841834

My base makes now enough money (average pilot skill is 2-3, the base has arround 30-40 M Miner (3-5 Gas) and 30-40 M Trader)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2517841784

I needed some time to make the miners fly to richer areas like
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2517845179

Next one i place in Trinity Sanctum III, mostly for strategical reasons

My first miner base i made in Cardinals Redresss btw. but deleted it as soon as my miners could go there from my new mainbase

[Maniac]

Yes i have 1 station which gets the wares from my HQ (which is currently the only station i produce a bit of everything) but since its located in nopileos fortune II there are not that many traders coming there so i wanted a better place to sell my wares but the other one doesnt seem to be that good either

[Gregorovitch]

My thoughts on this are slightly different.

1. Trade stations don't make very much money to start with just buying and selling, however.....

2. ......that's no reason not to build them ASAP because a) they are dirt cheap to build, b) they earn you a crap ton of rep with the factions and c) when you start making your own wares and sell them via your trade stations they make a fortune because.....

3. .....by that time they will all have 5* managers and can distribute you wares far and wide. At this point I will have switched them all to buy everything from my faction only.

4. IMHO the optimal set up is a ring of trade stations, maybe three, around the inner highway ring. This means you can set up your production factories in places like Grand Exchange, 18 Billion and Black Hole Sun where they will be able to deliver to all the trade stations pretty quickly as their managers level up. The trade stations will give your factories a vast reach to sell their stuff. However.....

5. The big strategic problem is reaching the two Split factions and the northern Paranid and Argon outposts 'cos they are too far away, five sectors from the ring don't cover it. I haven't really nailed the best way to deal with that in my current game but I have experimented in a limited way with a "double hop" arrangement. This is a warehouse station located Bright Promise next to my regular trade station that only buys from me and only sells to me feeding a trade station in Open Market to cover the ZYA, the northern Argon outposts and some of the Paranid northern outposts and some of the rebel Split. This works after a fashion but in practice I was a bit late with this as my shipyards had started consuming practically everything I make by this time, speaking of which....

6. ...... now that you can't buy in goods to make ships profitably the mid-game trade station bonanza tends to peter out a bit once you get you shipyards going since they are effectively gaping maws over bottomless pits hoovering up everything you can produce and still demanding more. This is not technically true, you can always increase production to generate a surplus for trade, but it does seem that way.

In summary Trade station have enormous strategic significance for your business because:

a) they give your production factories a massive pool of customers to sell to far beyond what they could ever hope to reach themselves and as a result....

b) they enable you to build those production facilities more or less anywhere central you like and especially within easy range of your crucial mining stations harvesting the prime mining grounds in places like Pious Mists IV and The Void.

So even if they don't make that much money just trading early (much less than mining stations for example) I recommend building them early anyway to level up their managers ASAP and use a basic formula of two sectors to where you want to build you factories and five to where you want them sell to eventually to decide where to put them. They will be your primary profit generators from early mid-game until you get your shipyards up after which they become a bit of a sideline but still make plenty of money, just not as much as shipyards.

[Daddy Shark]

I like the nuclear approach. I have a pre-built station that produces all universal wares. Instead of faffing about with trying to finagle stuff around the map with a series of breadcrumbs, I just plop down a super-station that makes everything from raw resources wherever it's needed. It's the best way to just get the job done.

Sure, if you like twiddling around with the game systems and trying finesse the AI into moving stuff from one side of the galaxy to the other then trade stations are great. But to just get the work done and get to making money the nuclear approach is best.

[Cythal]

Trade Centre Location that I tend to all build at, all within 5 Jumps.

1. Second Contact Flashpoint
2. Jupiter
3. Bright Promise
4. Two Grand (smaller to just reach stations in the outskirts)
5. Heretics End (same as above)

Only sector not reachable is Tharka's Ravine IV Tharka's Fall, It is a Xenon sector and I tend to claim it and Matrx 451 and connect them with an internal distribution trade station. Can be reached with station in Two Grand.

I also use trade stations to level up my managers early on and reassign them to extend station reach as I continue to build my productions stations and mining operations.

My Trade stations do not have production facilities, just storage and docks. But you have to be carefull not to overload them with storage as a large storage hoard storage of wares and may prevent them from getting distributed to other trade stations.

Early on I set prices manually and buy and sell from AI. Once production is up and running I set to automatic but only buy from me. Try not to overproduce and saturate the market.

Well, with the beta update, I think with hazard regions, and explosions damaging ships, we now have more ways for ships to get destroyed and create demand for wares. War is probably now not the only way good for business.