Your favorite trade routes

[Liakmad]

Sooo, I was running between Iolia and Concordia for an embarasing amount of time, trading commodities. And now I'm wandering, is there a better route?
How you optimize your time investments, my fellow traders? :)

[probe]

You don't trade for profit. You trade because you're a trader.

[Humble]

it's took too much time for little money, I find it's much faster and fun doing freenacer mission and cap/sell ship more profit in time investments, trading is too much of time investments, maybe early game it's ok if you knew what item to buy and sell, but mid to late game not so much.

[Chompman]

You would need a better trading mod to improve prices to really make it worthwhile.

[Liakmad]

Hmmm, can't say i agree with that.
The trade route I'm using right now goes like that: get from Concordia Fertilizer (profit 2480 per unit, ~380 available), Empire artefacts (2056/u, ~370 max), Hydroponics pod (1160/u, ~400 max) and Envirosuits (1000/u, ~380 max); go to Iolia, sell all, take home Laser sidearm (3965/u, ~1380 max).
Iolia appears on the map once you construct a T-Gates.
The route (through gates) takes 59 second from undocking in one end to docking in another, including plotting waypoints on starchart and replotting them because AI panics on gate exit. Commodities fully resuply on the next visit.

You can get a freighter at lvl 4. Concordian one, Caelifera, costs 750,000cr and holds 275 units of cargo.
So you fill it up with fertilizer (that takes 1.5mil cr), sell for 2480*275 = 682kcr, take back laser sidearms for 1.09Mcr and all that inside 2.5 minutes. As locals call it, The Sh*tgun trade. :)

Trading gets you lvls, and at 16 you'll be able to get a freightliner. I got Eridan on sale (1325 cargo max), but for full price of 45Mcr Concordian Dinastes looks better as it has a cargohold of 1900. That 5.5Mcr profit of laser sidearms and 600 units of other cargo in time it takes you to scan four derelicts and get back for a new freelance mission, completely risk-free.

I just wander if there is an optimization somewhere there that I've missed. Because it's tedious.

[Humble]

that's only good once you had station control, but not before then as some player like take sweet time before doing that, but do want rich and level up fast. Yes, trader in this game is kind of tedious.

[Chompman]

That is a nice trade line and you may want to try this mod as it's primary goal is to make mining better but it does increase your cargo hold by a lot, 650 for normal freighters and 5,000 for freightliners.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=804363533

[Superschaf]

If you want to make quick money, check out Fairuz (Union territory) and Holocom HQ (right next to the planet).
You can make 5.000.000 credits within 10 seconds.
Buy Fertilizers on Fairuz for 3000 and sell them at Holocom HQ for 6000 with only some seconds flight time. ;-)
You can also sell them on Thauria for 9000 but you will need much more time.

[Seeigel]

Just a quick question:
I can use a trade-ship for myself, but can I use them in my fleet or for the AI?
So that push my cargo space even further?

Being the only trader-ship seems a bit boring...

[Liakmad]

Nope, you can't. Life of a trader is a lonely one.

[Sadnesswolf]

might be very old but doing free roam atm, Loliapact buying laser sidearm for 10.8k and selling at Corrion for 22.5k (just buying fish at corrion and looping back through warp gate.) Only dlc i have is the titan expansion no mods. Really nice profit >-> ...

[NoHome]

when you are doing the Iolis run, you can use 4 T-drives per round trip with 2 perk points in Trickster for a round trip time of 30 seconds on equipment cooldown. You can warp directly next to T-gates and HQ, but you need to fly 10k units to the planet

[Gramarye]

Originally posted by Liakmad:

Hmmm, can't say i agree with that.
The trade route I'm using right now goes like that: get from Concordia Fertilizer (profit 2480 per unit, ~380 available), Empire artefacts (2056/u, ~370 max), Hydroponics pod (1160/u, ~400 max) and Envirosuits (1000/u, ~380 max); go to Iolia, sell all, take home Laser sidearm (3965/u, ~1380 max).
Iolia appears on the map once you construct a T-Gates.
The route (through gates) takes 59 second from undocking in one end to docking in another, including plotting waypoints on starchart and replotting them because AI panics on gate exit. Commodities fully resuply on the next visit.

You can get a freighter at lvl 4. Concordian one, Caelifera, costs 750,000cr and holds 275 units of cargo.
So you fill it up with fertilizer (that takes 1.5mil cr), sell for 2480*275 = 682kcr, take back laser sidearms for 1.09Mcr and all that inside 2.5 minutes. As locals call it, The Sh*tgun trade. :)

Trading gets you lvls, and at 16 you'll be able to get a freightliner. I got Eridan on sale (1325 cargo max), but for full price of 45Mcr Concordian Dinastes looks better as it has a cargohold of 1900. That 5.5Mcr profit of laser sidearms and 600 units of other cargo in time it takes you to scan four derelicts and get back for a new freelance mission, completely risk-free.

I just wander if there is an optimization somewhere there that I've missed. Because it's tedious. :macface:

Heh. Without ever having read this post, I arrived at a very similar route, only going between Concordia and Solyma rather than Iolia, though if the prices are similar, your Iolia route would be available earlier in the game because Solyma starts out hostile to the Concord.

I didn't start doing serious trade grinding until midgame when I captured a Freightliner. Just a lowly Heimdall but they were everywhere. That 1250 cargo was still enough to grind serious money and levels simply running between Phanaeros and Concordia, which would be even better for early campaign when you basically haven't expanded or leveled up at all. Bring Medicine from Phanaeros to Concordia, and Fertilizer back from Concordia to Phanaeros (and, once you have space, e.g., a Freightliner, add Envirosuits and Thrusters and one other commodity I can't even remember from Concordia).

I didn't start doing major interplanetary trading using the T-Gates until after I had the Prosperity.

I think if I play another campaign, I'll go for a Freighter fairly early and just grind levels and money because the game really takes off once you can buy yourself a supercapital ship, particularly a Dreadnought. The most fun I had during this game was actually before I finished the campaign and got the Prosperity. The mid-late-campaign fights as a Vanguard in a Dreadnought with all the special upgrades are wacky fun.