What do player owned trade stations offer?

[:3 Sweetness and Blushes]

I just built one, but I don't see how I would be able to many any profit off of it, so I don't know what to do with it now.

Is there another purpose for them that i'm missing?

[Cy]

there are 2 types of stations which are interesting for a player and another type that is basically just cosmetic with no real purpose.

1. factories and mines -> steady money income ( requires a big investment and preparations to get the income going ( mines are easier to start with compared to factories) )

2. Functional Stations like turret factories to possibly get weapons that surpass any other turret factory and other Stations

3. cosmetic Stations like military outposts.

you probably know what npc trade stations do ... and yet you decided to build one for what reason? if you simple do stuff just because you can do it. You mind end up not liking what you did.

apparently I dont see any benefit for owning trade stations apart from maybe trying to get some random rng based goods collection going ( traders automatically filling it up) Now that I think of it there could be another use for such trade station in connection to owning factories.

If you simply own a trade station as your 1st station ... you made a mistake and wasted ressources + money I think.

[Chiss_Smuggler]

Well you get trade taxes from npc interactions from any trade stations you own. But I am not sure when/if it becomes profit over the cost.

[LORDSOL]

I checked the hard copy station list i printed out and its not on the list.But here's what i'm gonna assume that you would get more from it in Multi player (selling cargo licences and what ever random inventory menu) ,npc ships do visit those stations you will get a small relations improvement.so with saying that i bought cargo licences from myself and i never just take stuff
from my own stations i buy it and i use my trading posts as storage facilities

so as CY said for a first station it's a costly mistake i suggest you do what i did and get a copy of the station list and don't freak out and kill the station you built keep it your gonna make millions of credits's anyway

[:3 Sweetness and Blushes]

Originally posted by Cy:

there are 2 types of stations which are interesting for a player and another type that is basically just cosmetic with no real purpose.

1. factories and mines -> steady money income ( requires a big investment and preparations to get the income going ( mines are easier to start with compared to factories) )

2. Functional Stations like turret factories to possibly get weapons that surpass any other turret factory and other Stations

3. cosmetic Stations like military outposts.

you probably know what npc trade stations do ... and yet you decided to build one for what reason? if you simple do stuff just because you can do it. You mind end up not liking what you did.

apparently I dont see any benefit for owning trade stations apart from maybe trying to get some random rng based goods collection going ( traders automatically filling it up) Now that I think of it there could be another use for such trade station in connection to owning factories.

If you simply own a trade station as your 1st station ... you made a mistake and wasted ressources + money I think.

I've set it up as my fifth or so station, because I really wanted to figure out what it would do, ontop of the description saying that I earn trade taxes. I have no clue how that mechanic works exactly now though, since I wasn't able to figure out anything.

Is there a way to measure profit per station easily? I'm not even sure if its adding any more profit to my other station sells either.

So far, the only use I found out of it, was to get some random goods and hope it's something useful.

Doesn't it use your own credit balance to buy the goods from the NPCs?

[SixtyToZero]

Mines give steady income and positive relations over time.
Resource depots,equipment and military stations offer convenience and missions if strategically placed.
Placing a repair dock enables you to switch over to it and reconstruct any destroyed ships.
I usually place stations at various points in the galaxy map, but build my Forward Operating Sector [repair dock, resource depot, research lab, turret/fighter factory] a few sectors from 0.0.

[Abelardo]

Kinda late but for me, my trade station is giving tons of money just in taxes. I intentionally put it in a sector with 4 gates. Even more, the station at this point, "trades" with "air money". It buys and the AI sells, without any cost for you. So if you put some very large cargo bays, the AI will literally, GIFT you, tons... and tons... of any random cargo in the game. You can "cheat" and pick up the cargo with a freighter, and sell it to any station that needs it and that's it.
The basic "buy low, sell high" concept, but in this case, you buy for free.

[:3 Sweetness and Blushes]

Originally posted by Abelardo:

Kinda late but for me, my trade station is giving tons of money just in taxes. I intentionally put it in a sector with 4 gates. Even more, the station at this point, "trades" with "air money". It buys and the AI sells, without any cost for you. So if you put some very large cargo bays, the AI will literally, GIFT you, tons... and tons... of any random cargo in the game. You can "cheat" and pick up the cargo with a freighter, and sell it to any station that needs it and that's it.
The basic "buy low, sell high" concept, but in this case, you buy for free.

It doesn't seem to pull out money of nowhere, at least I haven't fully confirmed it, so I'm not sure how profitable it really could be. The only use I found so far, is just to get random materials, and hope you got some useful ones on building a new one.

[Abelardo]

Originally posted by :3 Sweetness and Blushes:

Originally posted by Abelardo:

Kinda late but for me, my trade station is giving tons of money just in taxes. I intentionally put it in a sector with 4 gates. Even more, the station at this point, "trades" with "air money". It buys and the AI sells, without any cost for you. So if you put some very large cargo bays, the AI will literally, GIFT you, tons... and tons... of any random cargo in the game. You can "cheat" and pick up the cargo with a freighter, and sell it to any station that needs it and that's it.
The basic "buy low, sell high" concept, but in this case, you buy for free.

It doesn't seem to pull out money of nowhere, at least I haven't fully confirmed it, so I'm not sure how profitable it really could be. The only use I found so far, is just to get random materials, and hope you got some useful ones on building a new one.

As for me, it gives me taxes and materials out of nowhere... my only problem is that I have to check the wiki to know what station can buy me one. =P
Also, if you don't "empty" the cargo, the station doesn't gives you anything. If your station cargo bay is full, it stops trading at all, so you have to keep that in mind. O.O

Edit: Also make sure the station is inside a trade route. I built mine in a 4 gate sector.
It cost me a lot of materials, but at least I use it like a fighter assembly.

[Crazy9000.Eps]

Originally posted by :3 Sweetness and Blushes:

It doesn't seem to pull out money of nowhere, at least I haven't fully confirmed it, so I'm not sure how profitable it really could be. The only use I found so far, is just to get random materials, and hope you got some useful ones on building a new one.

It does pull money out of nowhere, I added one to an alliance with no money and a bit later it had made $2m without me doing anything. I then transferred the cargo hold to my ship and made the $30m back after two or three trips. One of the things it had was gauss rails which sold for $8m at another trading outpost. For construction I gave it a power generator, shield gen, and a huge cheap iron cargo hold. I also threw a few docks on it just in case that helps.

There real question is if there's better spots to put it in order to get more ship traffic, or if it's always about the same.

[Abelardo]

Originally posted by Crazy9000.Eps:

Originally posted by :3 Sweetness and Blushes:

It doesn't seem to pull out money of nowhere, at least I haven't fully confirmed it, so I'm not sure how profitable it really could be. The only use I found so far, is just to get random materials, and hope you got some useful ones on building a new one.

It does pull money out of nowhere, I added one to an alliance with no money and a bit later it had made $2m without me doing anything. I then transferred the cargo hold to my ship and made the $30m back after two or three trips. One of the things it had was gauss rails which sold for $8m at another trading outpost. For construction I gave it a power generator, shield gen, and a huge cheap iron cargo hold. I also threw a few docks on it just in case that helps.

There real question is if there's better spots to put it in order to get more ship traffic, or if it's always about the same.

I think someone said in reddit that if you put it in a non-gate sector, it just stays there.
I got the fortune that mine is trading Computers... and that one of the gates goes to another one that actually buys them... so I get like 200M every few minutes.
Jumped from 157 m credits after constructing it, to almost 2000m in 3 or 4 days, playing SP, just relying on that, not touching anything else. O.O

[:3 Sweetness and Blushes]

I see, interesting to know, but it does seem like a bug or unintended feature. Thank you everyone for sharing your information and experience with it!

[TheJebblue]

Originally posted by :3 Sweetness and Blushes:

I see, interesting to know, but it does seem like a bug or unintended feature. Thank you everyone for sharing your information and experience with it!

IDK it sounds like trade, economy, think that's the main point of the game. I'm sure glad to know there's a decent way to make credits, until this thread, I was starting to think making small amounts from a Noble Metal mine was all that was possible. Now I can imagine making some powerful turrets one day and defeating whatever's at the core.

[Abelardo]

Originally posted by jebblue:

Originally posted by :3 Sweetness and Blushes:

I see, interesting to know, but it does seem like a bug or unintended feature. Thank you everyone for sharing your information and experience with it!

IDK it sounds like trade, economy, think that's the main point of the game. I'm sure glad to know there's a decent way to make credits, until this thread, I was starting to think making small amounts from a Noble Metal mine was all that was possible. Now I can imagine making some powerful turrets one day and defeating whatever's at the core.

Kinda like the "economy" in this game isn't about credits but materials.
I'm drowning in credits selling computers and all the other stuff... And it's hard as hell to get the amount of ore resources to actually do something with those credits.