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Main: Scybot 010
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Post Basic Trading
  1. Introduction
  2. Scouting
    1. The Best Commodity
  3. The Right Equipment
    1. Speed Augs vs Cap Augs
  4. Letting Others Do The Work For You



1. Introduction

"How do I earn money", that's one of the most famous and most important questions usually asked by players who are just getting started. Star Sonata is a "Space Trading Game", according to the frontpage and trading is in fact a very good possibility to make money. There are three types of trading, trading with AI Bases, trading with colonys and trading with players. This guide will focus on trading with AI bases.

2. Scouting

Trading requires you to have a trade route, which is the key to making profit. The best trader can't make much profit with a bad trade route. Finding a good trade route is tricky due to their tendancy to be exploited by other players fairly quick and the sometimes rapid price fluctuations. If a lot of players buy something (=high demand), the prices will rise. If a lot of players sell something (=high supply), the prices will drop.

Therefore, your aim will have to be to find the best route as quickly as possible and exploit it as much as possible, if you aim for the big bucks. To find the best route, you need to have a quick ship, hull space doesn't matter. Dock at as many bases as possible, check the price, write them down, repeat.

The Best Commodity

Most commoditiys have their advantages and disadvantages, you would sooner or later learn them, but to make life easy, I'll write down my experiences.

  • Metals, Rations
    They tend to not go well, however, if you find a base that has no metals/rations for sale at all due to people making bases without having the ressources, you can make quite some money AND make someone else happy.
  • Baobabs, Crack Whores, Nuclear Waste
    Those seem to work pretty well. Unlike Promethium, they don't have a Halflife, allowing you to fly very long routes without loosing too much in case your trade route has collapsed before you arrive.
  • Peasants
    Due to Colony Pumping (players selling a huge amount of peasants to their colonys), AI bases tend to being completly emptied of peasants, creating a huge demand. If you happen to find a base selling cheap peasants, you can make nice profit.
  • Promethium
    If you ask what commodity is best to do trades with, everyone will answer "Promethium". Its prices can be as low as 5,000 credits per, up to 45,000 per, allowing you to make millions of credits in a single run. However, you need to find a balance between cargo space and speed of your ship, the more you have, the more decays. A big, but slow ship might not be the best choice, a fast, but small ship will quickly tire you if you choose to fly a long route.
  • Rest
    If you see a base selling any commodity for a very low price and know a base buying for high, ignore the rules and just go and do that route. Might be worth it and that's what counts.

2. The Right Equipment

Freighters like the Bulk Traders seem to be the best choice, but are they? It really depends. The longer your route, the more time you will be traveling, that's obvious. Let's look at the extreme:
Base A is 10 distance from Base B. Base A sells cheap Baobabs, Base B buys them for a lot, which ship to take? A fast ship will have barely any chance to reach its max speed, while the slow speed of a freighter will be barely any disadvantage at all and you won't have to dock/undock as often with a big cargo hold. Other possibility:
Base A is 5 jumps (around 20,000 distance) away from Base B. You will spend most of your time traveling, barely any time docking/undocking/selling/buying, a fast ship would be the best choice.

Speed Augs vs Cap Augs

Speed or Capacity augs on a fast or big ship? What's best? Both increases your efficency. We have to remind ourselves that StarSonata is a game, it's your decision. If you like going fast, use speed augs on a fast ship, if you like making a bunch of money in one go (but probably making less at long sight!), use cap augs on a big ship. Keep in mind that cap augs on a very small ship are not as effective, neither are speed augs on a very slow ship.

3. Letting Others Do The Work For You

If you dislike trading and would love to have a fail-proof, automatic way to earn money, I have to get you down. There's none. You could use slaves, but there is no stable trade route when trading with AI bases. Absolutly none. If you tell a slave to trade a commodity from Base A to Base B, they will do it, no matter if the prices change or not. Slaves doing trades with AI bases will eventually loose money. Always.



I hope I covered the basics and didn't get too much wrong. Corrections and additions are appreciated.
P.S. This guide is supposed to help new players, sooner or later, you will spend more money in a single trade than you can earn in a week trading with AI bases. "Capping" and for the more advanced players "Colonies" are the keywords.

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Last edited by longname on Wed May 13, 2009 8:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Wed May 13, 2009 11:08 am
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Post Re: Basic Trading
Very well written, i like it! :D


Wed May 13, 2009 1:09 pm
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Post Re: Basic Trading
That's "Colonies". And nice guide, will be very handy to noobs. What would be cool is if we could vote on the guides in here, and the ones that win get put into a help screen, opened by f1, to help the noobs. That way, rather than giving a lengthy explaination whenever someone asks, we just say "Press F1 for all the answers to life's secret questions!"

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Wed May 13, 2009 8:06 pm
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Post Re: Basic Trading
Demiser of D wrote:
That's "Colonies".

Eh, thanks, what a stupid mistake. As you can see, english is not my first language.

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Wed May 13, 2009 8:15 pm
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Post Re: Basic Trading
longname wrote:
Demiser of D wrote:
That's "Colonies".

Eh, thanks, what a stupid mistake. As you can see, english is not my first language.

No... never would have guessed. Long posts have a higher probability of typos.

Excellent work!

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Wed May 13, 2009 8:23 pm
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Post Re: Basic Trading
The ships:

Pax Xmas
pros: best hull to slots ratio
aug: basic cap or speed
slave slots:3
expansion: traders expansion or FC expansion
shield: pax constitutional explorer
or "*stream" shield for safe route
engine: micro cloud flow, bule shover, glissom
radar: revealer
energy: cyonatic fission (Shield +25%, Turning +25%)
bot: massif trader control bot / efficient bot

Rosburst+
pros: low slots and more augs flexibility
aug: 3 x minor caps (or 3 pimans ftw!), or minor speeds
slave slots: 2
expansion: FC expansion / best hull extension
shield: *stream
engine: micro cloud flow, bule shover, glissom
radar: micro revealer
energy: cyonatic fission (Shield +25%, Turning +25%)
bot: speedy bot / massif bot

EFF
pros: very fast, long range, large hull
aug: 2xstd cap
slave slots: 5
expansion: FC expansion / best hull extension
shield: paxian excelsior explorer or similar speedy pax shield
engine: built in capital engine
energy: lux et veritas (+30% Shield; +30% Shield Recharge)
bot: massif trader control bot / efficient bot
equip: capital slave travelling field (from beta antares), +GG10

Helga
pros: low slots / best for local routes
aug: minor cap
slave slots: 1
expansion: FC expansion / best hull extension
shield: slipstream / mythstream
radar: arat
energy: flux capacitor
engine: glissom
bot: any

Wing4
pros: stealthy, fast, long distance (good for long prom runs)
aug: caps
slave slots: 6
expansion: FC expansion / best hull extension
shield: slipstream / mythstream etc
radar: low vis
energy: flux capacitor
engine: purg thrust / blue engine
bot: any

tips:
*dont forget a stasis gen even on "safe" routes, if one disappears you dont often notice its gone.
*to excecute 2 trades at one station you need to get it to redock for the second trade. e.g dock, sell, dock, buy
*always make sure your routes are complete loops.
*dont forget to give the slave money, when you manually dock them they empty their money.
*check them often using X and status report
*follow them on a complete cycle at least once doing status at each hop
*try to produce goods from you bases to ensure price stability at one end of the deal at least
*find players who need commods and agree a delivery price with them
*sometimes u need to visit the destination gal for the base to apear in ur program list
*try to make use of all ur programs perhaps with a return cargo as well as outgoing cargo
*slaves mostly lose radars and chargers when killed, check or use GG.
* trans modded scoops add hull
*dont forget shield charger
* lay perma drones along dangerous routes for healing


Thu May 14, 2009 3:43 am
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Post Re: Basic Trading
Highway drones are effective at mobilizing slaves due to x2 speed aura. I have often though about using that. Just wondering.

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Thu May 14, 2009 6:07 am
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Post Re: Basic Trading
Nice guide m8

Kanga

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Fri May 15, 2009 1:37 pm
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Post Re: Basic Trading
Nice guide, easy to understand and well thought-out. One thing I would like to add is that it is usually more profitable to avoid the more popular areas. Places where there are often people tend to have already been used by someone else, meaning it will be far less profitable. Typically, the farther you get from Sol, the better your odds of finding a nice one will be. Just remember that other F2Ps can attack you in warp 1.

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Fri May 15, 2009 3:03 pm
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Post Re: Basic Trading
I got a super un-risky and super profitable route for F2P in W1 for some reason...100m per day with no risk is fun

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Fri May 15, 2009 5:58 pm
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Post Re: Basic Trading
ima look around till i find your slaves and use the same route

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Fri May 15, 2009 11:14 pm
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