Merchant Guide On Impossible as a Pacifist

This is your Merchants Guide. The guide will take you on a journey from a humble merchant to the galaxy's highest commodity dealer. And it will be accomplished without ever firing a weapon of any kind in crew combat or ship combat.

Captain the Pacifist Merchant

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623310734


Lets start with explaining the idea of the build first. The most important item for this Captain is skills. As attributes aren't really high on the list since it will be a Pacifist run. There will be NO ship combat and NO crew combat at all. Not 1 shot fired in ship combat or crew combat.

A. Skills

1. Negotiate 10, because it is important for merchant talents and smuggling talents if you decide to add smuggler as a job in your run. I did not add it in my personal run.

2. Command 10, because command is important for ship combat. Escaping and Defending (evading) uses command pool as standard dice. If for some unknown reason you actually get stuck in a fight you will need your command pool. Total Command pool is also used for Patrolling which will be a big part of this run through.

3. Tactics 3, because it is much like command pool. It will boost escape dice and patrolling dice. So why not throw your leftover 3 points into it.

B. Ship

Because we want to start with a trading vessel. And the Paladin Cruiser is the best starting trader. Don't be fooled into getting the Galtak Freighter it is not as good. But Jimmy it gets 75 starting cargo, its the god trading ship!!

No its a trap!!!! Paladin starts with a hospital unit and can easily replace its large fuel tank for a 3rd Cargo 1 slot early game giving you those 25 cargo to bring your total up to 75. It costs about $28k to go from large fuel tank to Cargo 1. In fact you can use the Paladin until end game if you really wanted too. It is more upgrade-able than the Galtak Freighter. It just has a better component layout and better true mass. And you can get it up to 150 cargo.

Now The overall best 5000m trade ship is the Galtak Heavy Lift though but you can't start with it.However it will be our ending ship and it will have something like almost 400 fuel and 260+ cargo capacity.

C. Contacts

Because you want 4 contacts. We start with the Commander, Spy, Pirate and Smuggler contacts.

But Jimmy, But Jimmy some of them are locked!!!!! Oh no the humanity!!!!!

Well Spy and Pirate are EASY unlocks so if your playing on Impossible go and do those 2 RIGHT NOW. Each one should take less then 10 minutes of real life time. No excuses. GET IT DONE NOW!!!

1. Commander unlock is based upon a story so might be more challenging. Fear not. If you don't have Commander unlocked take the ZEALOT contact. We are using it for command and patrolling card deck talents. Zealots are certainly not as good as Military Officers for this run. But if you don't have the unlock you can't chanced discovering a Military Officer contact. So play it safe and pick the Zealot contact that everyone can pick. Use it as last resort.

As a pacifist merchant Patrolling and Spying are just as important as making Space Bucks $$. You must master those card games. And we need spies and military officers with their card deck manipulation talents. MO's and Spies also have a talent to get you out of encounters. So double bonus.

Remember we are not running any missions. Only way to max out your contact's offerings is by spying and patrolling. Since Effective Rep is faction rep + personal rep. Spying gets personal rep and patrolling gets faction rep.

Is this clear? Crystal.

2. Why are we getting Pirates and Smugglers? Well First its a good idea to replace some pilots with pirates and we will have no gunners since we are Pacifists. But in our run we will be using the Pirates ability to get out of encounters heavily. We can also use pirate talent to get merchants to give us their cargo peacefully for a small rep hit. Why not get free cargo to trade when we can? Remember we will be masters of Patrol and Spy craft we will have ZERO faction problems. Our rep will most likely be near maxed out with everyone.

3. Smugglers are important for 2 reasons. They have encounter talents that get you out of a jam. And also black market card manipulation. You might not use black market a lot early game but by mid to late game most of our trades should be black market trades to increase profit. But we need those encounter talents the entire game.

Everyone we soon will be recruiting will get us out of encounters and allow us to control card games such as patrolling, spying and black marketing. Since spying/patrolling can get you into ship combat those encounter talents are that much more important to our SURVIVAL.

****All of those encounter talents and card deck talents basically mean we can spy/patrol with no risk******


D. Attributes

We really only need 30 charisma that its. Nothing to see here. Move along.

E. Experience

Higher level isn't needed here. And by the time we are done "tutorial missions" we will be around levels 5-6 anyway.

Here is the Starting Captain
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623310107

Starting Faction - Alta Mesa 4 Life!!!! But it is actually important here. More so for the location of your starting home system.

Starting Officers

1. Officers

Launch the game and immediately check out your officers. Everyone will have slightly different officers because of attributes, skills, traits, etc.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623310125

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623310144

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623310166

The Doctor we will be keeping and then jobbed into a Combat Medic and Spy. Why? Because early game we want 2 doctor saving throws in space or you will get hurt a lot travelling around. Spy because spying is important to peaceful merchants to get those card game talents.

Engineer and Quartermaster YOUR FIRED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why? Because first on Impossible one officer has to be a Navigator so we can get to 11th level quick and get "Skip off to the Void" or any Xeno encounter will our run after 90 minutes of play time. Since we are traders you will need a 2nd merchant.

We want someone with high charisma, their inital job doesn't matter to us. And neither of those 2 officers has high charisma. So they are fired. We will eventually get a 5th officer cabin, So don't worry about letting officers go early.

This isn't a classic cRPG like Baldur's Gate 2. Your officers an crew aren't AI companions. Think of them as equipment. You get what equipment you need, getting rid of equipment you don't need. This is for any run not just this. I see too many players locked into their starting officers and crew. They are FLUID!!!!

2. Crew

Scan your crew looking for members with high charisma. Everyone's crew will be different but you should be able to find someone with 25+.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623310189

Ok we have found a Crew Dog with 25 charisma. Congrats you are our new officer. This crew dog when hitting 2nd level will go Merchant.

****** DO NOT pick a talent yet. We will pick a talent when he gets to level 1 merchant.***********

Ok now try and find your best navigator.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623310208

This one happened to be the best one on my crew "stat wise" So she gets promoted. She will level up Navigator job every time all the way up to Level 11 so we can get "Skip Off to the Void"

Pacifist Merchant Important Objectives/Tasks/Goals

As a Pacifist merchant what is important to us?

1. Faction Reputation
2. Permits/Military Ranks and Edicts
3. Getting out of encounters peacefully
4. Gaining Contacts and increasing rep/influence
5. Gaining Rumors
6. Making Profit

1. Faction Reputation is everything. The more you have the easier encounters in space will be. All of a sudden you can just retreat or acknowledge and instead of losing rep you are now gaining rep.

2. Permits/Military Ranks and Edicts
I. Trade Permits allow you to trade.

****It also blocks Pirates from taking your cargo once you hit Permit level 2****

a. This is overlooked by all new players. This allows you to surrender to Pirates whose faction you hold Permit 2 or above with with no penalty. They cannot seize your cargo anymore even illegal goods. This automatically neuters pirates.

b. Get as many Trade Level 2 permits with factions as possible and conveinent.

c. Permit level 2 also allows for higher crew levels when recruiting from Contacts.

II. Military ranks allows recruiting of higher leveled crew, buying of ships, and at level 4 buying of faction specific ships.

a. What we are after is Military Rank 3 and above. Military/Zealot ships ignore local reputation in favor of faction reputation. Again this lowers hostility during encounters.

III. Edicts level 1 lowers bounty hunter hostility,

a.Level 2 edicts allow higher level recruits,

b. Edict 3 and above submit and you can now submit to Bounty Hunters and they let you go without inspecting and confiscating your cargo.


*****Everything goes hand and hand. Reputation, ranks, talents, encounters, card games. They are all related. We take advantage of everything. We are on a peaceful mission to increase PROFIT!!!!*******


3. Getting out of encounters peacefully

We will not survive in combat all. Entering combat is not a choice. We will DIE. We won't be able to escape and we won't be able to survive an attack. DO NOT enter Ship Combat EVER!!!!! Worst case is you give up your cargo if you have too.

*************DON'T ENTER COMBAT EVER NO MATTER WHAT***********************

The crew we are aiming for, the talents, and points above are there to get us out of encounters. Only encounters that are dangerous are Xeno's and pirates who we don't have faction permits with already.

For pirates we use a merchant talent to dump a random cargo and get us out of the encounter. So we will have to carry 10 individual low cost items to play the odds they are dumped instead of our 50 power generators.

Once we get our Navigator Officer to level 11. We never have to worry about Xeno's or Pirates again. We just use Skip off to the Void.

4. Gaining Contacts and increasing rep/influence

Contacts are our life blood. We need them for gear, crew recruits, rare trade goods, and the black market. Can't stress how important gaining and maintaining contacts are. Since we aren't running missions we are 100% relying on spying/patrolling to interact with contacts and get effective rep to max.


5. Gaining Rumors
Rumors are important. We want to avoid star systems that have pirate and xeno rumors as much as possible. Even when we are high level. Never temp fate. Low on fuel or failed saving throw away from not being able to use SotV and it will end your run.

6. Making Profit
We are merchants. Trading is Profit. Profit is life.

Early Game Tutorial Missions

Tutorial Missions are missions in your home system that have no hyperjumps and do not impact faction rep with another faction.

We do these missions for about the first 27 weeks of game time. This gets us personal rep with contacts, effective rep, and overall faction rep. And some minor profit.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623310234

See the missions that do not require a jump. Those are the ones we want. Avoid that 2 jump mission. Double check that they don't cause negative rep with anyone. Usually they do not. These are missions with no downside. And you can usually get anywhere from 3-6 missions of this type from each of your starting contacts. And we will have 3 contacts in our home system plus Prince Faen. So we should have 12-15 easy missions. The pay will be low. But that is ok. We don't do these missions for the pay.

These missions do 2 things. Increase our Faction Rep with Alta and increase our contacts influence and our personal rep with them.

This is important because we will need to be getting new crew. We need pirates, military officers, spies and smugglers all eventually. The tutorial missions will help us accomplish this by getting us easy and early funds an increasing contact effective rep which allows us to recruit max level recruits.

Out of our 24 crew members not counting officers. We want 3 Military Officers, 3 Spies, 2/3 Pirates and 2 Smugglers. The smugglers we will get but our 4th contact is not in our system but the Farfallen Rim system. And we will need the use of spies to gather and sell intel to that smuggler to recruit high level smuggler crew members. Because 4th starting contact is always outside of your faction.

Once you finish these "Tutorial Missions" you will be able to recruit Military Officers, Spies and Pirates from your starting contacts in your home system. Make sure you adjust your crew before going onto the next part of the guide. We will be leaving our home system.

Trading Alta Mes Home System

How and Where to Trade:

Your starting faction is always at conflict on game start. And its a Trade Ban which hurts us. If we sell in any exchange in our stating faction we get hit with a reputation penalty to a maximum of -28 total during conflict. Still it is not something we want to get involved doing.

We have 1 option in the Home Alta Mesa Starting System:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623400258

We are lucky we have an Indy Mining world. Completely permit free and conflict free trades. Industry and Orbital can feed into Mining. Literally you can by from the same planet system and just dock and sell at the Indy world.

Alta Mesa has 2 Industrial Planets and 2 Orbital planets in this system. We can make quick money going buying from Alta Mesa and selling to this Indy planet even though Indy are scums. Profit has no conscience.

Whenever you are trading you want to max out whatever unit you are selling. So if you are selling explosives buy the max explosives possible in your system from the same faction and then sell it all in 1 trade.

Eventually we are aiming for Trade Permit 3 from Alta Mesa and Permit 4 is a future luxury. A full cargo load of power generator pays for Permit 4 and after that it is all profit.

Trading Farfallen Rim System

Farfallen Rim System

Its a De Valtos Syndicate star system. We don't start with any permits there. However eventually our merchant talents will generate more contacts in this system allowing us to get permits, ranks, edicts for De Valtos.

But more importantly it has 2 low law Indy systems. An orbital and mining. Just trading between these 2 systems is worth about 30k in space buck profit.

This system is one of the most profitable systems for any captain in the game no matter what faction you start with. These 2 low law indy systems are perfect. The orbital even buys Xeno Artifacts for those Explorer type captain. They don't pay as much as Luxury Population planets but you don't need a Black Market contact either.

Farfallen Rim is a powerful profit making system. Where we can avoid laws and permits and conflicts most of the time. And because of our merchant talents we will eventually gain contacts in this system. We just have to get lucky and discover some black market contacts that hopefully buy Intel!!!!

See the screen shots
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623310386

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623310369

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623310410

These 2 systems are our bread and butter trading routes. Especially once Alta Mesa trading conflict ends. That's when we want to get Trade Permit 4 and start making serious profit buying and selling power generators, explosives, gas processors and other high end mining equipment in our home system.

Typically by the time you complete 1 route in a system and then hyperjump and land in the next system the exchanges will have refreshed and you can start repeating routes in these 2 systems.

Early game especially before level 11 there is NO NEED to travel to another star system. You stick in your home Alta Mesa system and the Farfallen Rim System.

Level 11 Officers and Captain Configuration

Here is what things should look like when you get to Level 11

1. We have gotten into many, many, many encounters
2. We have successfully been able to peaceful get out of 100% of those encounters
3. We have never been close to entering ship combat
4. We have encounter 0 Xeno ships or rumors
5. Yes we lost 20k of cargo once. Those are the breaks.

Rule of Acquisition #89
It's better to lose some profit and live than lose all profit and die

Rule of Acquisition #20
He who dives under the table today lives to profit tomorrow.

Level 11 Captain
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623415186

Level 1 Merchant, Level 5 Military Officer, Level 5 Spy

You might be asking yourself why is he only a level 1 merchant if this is a merchant run? Well we only need those two talents that get us new contacts. Market Confidant and Friendly Banter are all that is important to us early game traders. But we need the captain to Spy and Patrol so that is why he is on level 5 of both. That is when he gets the best card deck manipulation talents for each game.

***Note you could also go Smuggler instead of Spy and just pickup an additional spy in your crew***

Level 11 Doctor
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623415232

Like I said early. The Doctor goes straight to Combat Medic for the saving throw. Then we went to Spy for more card manipulation talents. So as soon as he hits level 5 spy its immediately back to doctor.

He can't really be replaced until we find a contact that recruits Doctors. Why? Because we need those saving throws for space travel. They are that important. Once we get 1/2 doctors on crew who have saving throws. We can replace this officer with something like a Doctor/Military Officer/Spy. Double up on those command points from Doctor and MO. While higher spy levels get us better intel gathering talents.

Level 11 Crew Dog/Merchant/Smuggler

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623415213

This is the crew dog we promoted to officer in our opening move of the game. He immediately obbed to merchant stopped at level 5 and jobbed to Smuggler.

His goal is mostly to fire off merchant talents that gain us contacts. His smuggler trait gets us rumors and out of encounters with other smugglers. And will focus on black market card game.

Later once we have more money. He will probably be replaced with a Merchant/Smuggler/Spy. We just have to recruit one who has high charisma. Because we will never level crew dog it is a waste.

Level 11 Navigator

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623415253

Only exists because we are on impossible and pacifists and a Xeno encounter ends your game. Objective complete. Skip of the Void confirmed. We retrained immediately on hitting level 11 for 9k space bucks. I forgot to save an open talent.

Long game he can be replaced once you have 2 crew navigators that also have SotV.
I can see a Merchant/Smuggler/Pirate officers taking the place of the navigator.

5th officer has been added by upgrading a torpedo bay into a 5th officer cabin.

Level 5 Smuggler/Level 5 Quartermaster/Level 1 Merchant
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623415275

she was recruited as a level 11 officer on 1 try. There was a rumor that gave us +2 levels. Plus permits etc. Recruited from our starting Rychar Smuggling contact in the Farfallen Rim System.

Again we need that level 1 merchant for contact gaining traits. Smuggler talents focus on getting us out of encounters. She is just acting as a back up to our crew members.

***Quartermaster not really needed. Could be another Military Officer or another Spy***

Level 11 Crew Configuration

Here is the Crew your are aiming for:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623415299

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623415313

As you can see we picked up 3 Military Officers, 3 Spies, 2 Smugglers and 2 Pirates. No fighters and no gunners. 4 crew dogs because splitting pilots and pirates and firing all your gunners does make you low on Ship Ops. Can be trimmed on higher levels.

The specialized crew talents focus on getting us out of encounters peacefully and card game talents.

Future crew we might add some more pirates. As their talent Terrifying Extortion will have merchants turn over their cargo without a fight suffering minor reputation hit. But we are so good at patrolling now and we aren't afraid of small rep hits because there is no encounter we can't get out of before combat happens.

This is how Pacifist Pirates can even exist in STF. We are aiming for Pacifist Merchants but I never said anything about 100% legal merchants. We will use stolen goods and black market goods and rare trade goods to make as much profit as possible.

Rule of Acquisition #9
Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.

Rule of Acquisition #202
The justification for profit is profit.

Level 11 Ship Configuartion

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623430749

The only changes are the 5th officers cabin and the Spy Module both took the place of a weapon. Pretty minor upgrades.

Rare Trade Good our Life Blood

First Goal - Find a Rare Trade Goods (RTG) Contact that Buys Intel

1. Continue doing the previous routes discussed. 1 in the Alta Mesa home system and 1 in the Farfallen Rim System. Eventually the Alta Mesa trade ban will lift which will give you more routes inside of the home system and open up the way to Trade Permit 4 and larger profits.

2. You want to scan your contacts all of the time. Because all of these trades you perform will be triggering your Merchant Talents that gain you new contacts.

Market Confidant
When executing a trade at the Exchange worth over $5,000, you have a 10% + Charisma chance of gaining an introduction to a Contact from the local Faction

Friendly Banter
When on spice leave in the hall, you have a Charisma % chance to learn about a Contact from the idle banter in the Hall

****These are both level 1. Market Confident is the only Talent you want that fires on trades above 5,000 credits. No other talents on anyone that fires like that or it will interfere with it.*****

Same thing for Friendly Banter you don't want any other talents that trigger in the spice hall. This goes for any Crew member with any job. Once we have enough RTG contacts then you can add more talents that trigger in spice hall. But for now you only want Friendly Banter.

***Never have multiple talents that fire on the same trigger or you won't be able to predict which one will fire or when****

You want those 2 talents on all of your merchant officers. No Excuses.

3. Identify RTG Contact. Filter by RTG and by Intel

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623484231

Perfect. He has RTG, Can issue permits and buy intel. This is our 1st De Valtos contact as well. So those trade permits will help. Remember level 2 means any De Valtos pirates cannot loot any of our cargo!!!!

Spy for Intel

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623484252

You can see we are really good at spying and also have many card deck manipulation talents. The reward factors aren't even that good on this planet. But it doesn't really matter that much because we have so many talents.

5. Sell all of the Intel. This will bump our De Valtos Rep, contact's influence, and our personal rep with the contact.

6. Buy a level 3 Permit from Him

7. Upgrade Ship. Replace Large Fuel Tank with Cargo Hold #2. Brings us to a total of 85 cargo.

8. Fill Cargo Hold with RTG

1st RTG Trade

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623484279

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623484321

You can buy as much RTG as you have the cargo space for granted you need enough Space Bucks to cover the cost. We load on 85 units for sale. There are 2 Luxury Population De Valtos Owned in the same planet system in Farfallen Rim. This is where we will sell. We also spawned a Black Market contact there. He will be used in the future.

RTG Always Open, Always Doing Business

Rinse and Repeat RTG.

(this is the formula you use as a peaceful merchant)

1. Scan Contacts and Look who we Find:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623484338

A Clan Moklumnue contact that sells RTG and has max level 2 trade permits who also buys intel. Perfect that is exactly who we want.

2. Gather and Sell Intel to max out Contact

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623484356

3. Buy max RTG

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623484374

4. Sell RTG. Guess what its back to FarFallen Rim system to the Lux Pop planets where we have a black market contact

5. What we do is sneaky. We sell only 50k worth of RTG on the black market to trigger:

Unlawful Royalty
When executing a trade at the Black Market worth over $50,000, gain a 50% + Charisma chance to learn about a Smuggler or Smuggler Prince Contact

Yes this kills supply and demand even in the exchange on this planet. But remember this is a DUAL luxury population planet. So you go next door and sell the rest triggering your normal merchant talents.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623484402

This 1 trip of 85 Kloxian Medical Bays basically made us 200k+ profit in 1 trip between 2 planets and we only 2 hyper jumps.


7. You will notice our cargo is up to 95. Well I got caught by a Xeno. Used SotV. Landed immediately. And this was in the Farfallen Rim System upon entering. I couldn't leave the planet as I only had 1 SotV still and it was on cooldown for at least another month. So I upgraded a Cargo hold which took 12 weeks. This 12 weeks got me past SotV cooldown and also gave enough time for the Xeno rumor to end. Free sailing from here.

8. This is why you need multiple talents. And never spend to your last dollar. I had about 100k reserved in case of emergencies. Think this upgrade was around 50k.


RTG is the primary reason to become a Pacifist Merchant. This is our main goal. From here on out all we do is trade in RTG and try to use the Black Market as much as possible to trigger finding another smuggler or smuggling prince contact. It gives us more black market access points and often more RTG sources.

Now we have 500k+ Space Bucks. We can start thinking about either maxing out cargo on the Paladin Cruiser or upgrading to a new ship and selling the Paladin Cruiser. Either way we will be aiming for around 1.5 - 2 million Space Bucks before we make a huge ship based decision. Those 50 unit cargo holds are around $250 each and we will need 4 of them. Plus the ship. Plus any other upgrades.

Best Pure Merchant Ship

Best Pure Merchant Ship

What do I think is the best pure merchant ship in the game. Well I am going with the Galtak Heavlift (GHL) 5000m and its 5 Large Component slots.

But Jimmy the Warhammer and Sword Battlecruiser have 7 slots aren't they better? Not at all. Out of those 7 slots 3 slots are the bridge, engine, hyperdrive which cant be changed in for cargo. So it gives you 4 large cargo slots. Which is exactly what your get the on the Galtak Heavylift as the only large slot that can't be changed is the engine. Giving you 4 slots for cargo.

All of the above ships can max out cargo in large slots at 200 units. The larger ones give you more officers and more crew. But we are Pacifists. So we have no need for 7 officers and 42 crew. They would go to waste. They also cost like 700-1 million more credits then the GHL. 200 units is all we need to start making trades over 1,000,000 credits.

The only reason you would even consider going full supersized capital ship, in the middle of the Pacifist Merchant run, is if you wanted to completely change your play through. If you wanted to add exploring or salvaging to the mix as an example or even if all of a sudden you are tired of being a Pacifist and you want some combat. 7 officers and 42 crew can help you change your play through to anything else you wanted without restarting from scratch. But that is for another time.

Buying 2nd Ship

Your 2nd Merchant Ship

Galtak Heavy Lift without question is #1 choice for a Pacifist merchant

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1624621182

Once you buy it. You will have to go to drydock and customize it. You will queue your purchases as it will take sometime. So you will still by flying your original Paladin Cruiser until the retrofit is complete.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1624621202

First thing is to look at your large slots. You want Four Cargo 5 installed. That is pretty much a million space bucks right there

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1624621213

Ok here are all of the upgrades
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1624621221

Everything is pretty much replaced for more cargo slots. I've added a spy module because we still need to get spying done and these modules DO NOT stack. So you only need 1. The ship needs 2 mass reducers a medium and small is what I went with. Other options are available. But you will need 2 of them.

We upgraded the crew to 30 and we added an officer cabin to bring it to 5. We also upgraded the engine to burn the least amount of fuel with the fastest traveling time. We updated the hyperdrive to have the lowest jump cost. As those cargo 5 will add lots of jump cost.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1624621295

Ok see when the launch date is. Its 1 year and 47 weeks out. So pretty much 2 full game years for all of these retrofits to be accomplished.

Buying the ship and upgrades took around 1.5 million space bucks. So you want around 2 million space bucks so you can use whatever is left to start more RTG sales until the ship is finished.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1624621312

265 Cargo
388 Fuel

*************IT'S A BEAST*************

Back to the RTG

You know the drill get to scanning your contacts:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1624621344

Now we sell on the black market

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1624622456

Ok that is 650k profit in 1 trade!!! Not counting our talent of:
Bootleg Profits
When executing a trade at the Black Market worth over $5,000, increase your profit of the trade by 20% + Negotiate Skill

You can easily hit an extra 30% from a normal level 11+ crew smuggler. A merchant/smuggler officer can hit 40% and a captain merchant/smuggler with 10 starting negotiation can hit over 50%.

This is how you get those 1 million space buck profit single trades. I had my smugglers setup to get Prince Smuggler contact on trade. You would have to retrain your talents and pick:

Rank: 5 Bootleg Profits
When executing a trade at the Black Market worth over $5,000, increase your profit of the trade by 20% + Negotiate Skill

***Remember do not pick multiple talents that fire on same trigger***

That is why you would have to retrain. As I setup my smugglers with:
Rank: 11 Criminal Connections
When executing a trade at the Black Market worth over $5,000, gain a 30% + Charisma chance to learn about a Contact

**Because I was in generate contact mode not necessarily maximizing profit mode***

Conclusion

Well that concludes this run. If you follow this you should have no problem becoming a top rate Pacifist Merchant.

There are lots of spin offs as well. If you did a crew combat captain build you could transition from peaceful merchant to full xeno combat after you made your fortune.

Even starting in the juror you can can still make nice profit only trading 25 units of RTG on the side no matter what your profession is.

Hope this run shows you how important Rare Trade Goods are to profit and fortune. And since RTG are so important it means Contacts are important. Since contacts are important spying and patrolling are important. Because personal rep + faction rep = effective rep. That is how the contacts base their interactions on.

End Game Stats

Here are some stats:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1629805958
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1629805997
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1629806020
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1629806054
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1629806120
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1629806159

We ran into 2 Xeno and used SotV both times. Side note I remember using SotV maybe 2 more times against pirates during RTG runs.

134 Patrols, 254 patrols, and 237 encounters. And ZERO ship or crew combats. Not 1 single shot fired. Ship combat screen not even ever seen in this run.

*****There should be no debate on getting out of encounters peacefully. This was on impossible.****

If I could do it this easy. Anyone can. You can see I only had to surrender 38 times. Most of them are to pirates while patrolling/spying while you have no cargo so let them loot or its protected by Trade Permit 2.

199 peaceful draws. This is largely because of encounter talents and positive faction with everyone. Honestly we didn't even interact with most factions. Think it was only 3 factions for us this run.

12 missions were the beginning "Tutorial Missions" that is it. Missions aren't good for Pacifist Merchants. Missions equal combat and negative rep. We don't like either of those things.

77 trades the entire play through that's it. Probably made near 10 million space bucks. Out of those 77 trades 15 were RTG. So we only had 61 trades. That's it.

Do not think as a merchant you will be doing hundreds or thousands of trades. Your goal as a merchant is Rare Trade Goods. Once you start finding contacts who sell RTG and Buy Intel you are on your path to your 1st fortune.

You don't need level 4 permits. You don't even need them with everyone. You need to keep your head above water until RTG show up. Then its profit, profit, profit.

Companion Discussion Thread

Check out the original thread this guide was created it and some discussion while I was updating the thread with live progress

https://steamcommunity.com/app/335620/discussions/0/3441214221464430253/

[peddroelm]

That Navigator officer slot (skip to the void). You won't fight to conscript a high level one but how about Recruiting from Merchant or Faction Judge contact ? Both can be buttered up with Intel ?

[JimmysTheBestCop]

You can also use this early to mid game as a helper to bridge you to ship and crew combat.

Just seitch captain to crew combat captain. A attributes. B skills. C ship. D contacts. E experience.

Less contacts but using merchant talents should get you plenty. Just going to have to make your officers merchants only need 1 level on 2-3 of them.

I would start with spy and mil officer contacts since you only get 2.

Eventually you can replace 2 officers for officer crew combatants. Plus captain and healing officer.

[Nim Nim]

But Jimmy! This is a good guide and it was certainly fun to read, guess I'm gonna try a peaceful run now :)

[JimmysTheBestCop]

@wraiedt C is enough for the Paladin. You will have a little less starting cash having in at C instead of B.

[wraiedt]

@JimmysTheBestCop when creating character for Paladin Cruiser enough is priority C. Ship

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Thanks. I was really trying to show case encounter talents and RTG trading.

As I feel a lot of new players don't select enough encounter talents because they put less value on them. They tend to look at the crew as rpg companions. I feel that is a trap.

And trading I see a lot of new players get confused by conflicts, permits and how to make money at the exchanges. But they basically don't know it's all about contacts and RTG as a merchant.

That's why I tried to show all my end game stats. Where I only had like 60 normal trades. I think people first see STF as one of those ok school age of discovery sailing games where you had to make thousands of trades to profit.

[Bariel]

Excellent guide Jimmy. I tend to do a lot of pacifist runs, and this is pretty much the way I do it as well - RTGs just become a way to print money once you have done the initial work to get the contacts and the rep.

[darion-neclador]

I'd give the guide a solid 8 out of 10 and +2 for picking Alta Mesa. But seriously great job Jimmy!