Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: Palladin on August 11, 2017, 06:07:54 PM
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OK I am in a station looking at missions and there is one for Transplutonics. Easy money I am thinking I. I hit E and look at the map to see where I might be able to get some and the map is only showing a 1/3 of the trade goods and transplutonics is not one of them.
So question
How the devil do I get the intel map to show me trade info on ALL trade goods all at the same time. Price info is useless if it does not include the info I am looking for. Trade info and mission timers expire to fast to bother running about trying to find the stuff if it is not right in the station where you get the mission.
It would be nice to if there was some kind of assets screen that showed everything I owned in storage by station. If there is a way to view storage while not at the station I have not found it yet.
I suspect the com relays have some connection to market price info. I am gong to test this buy going to another factions space and see if I get a diff set of market prices.
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You won't know the data if you never obtain it before. So the only way is you go around every single market in the game to obtain that info. What are they selling. What are they producing.
For now, trading isn't that profitable, even with contract. Beside, you are the only one that get exp from it. Your officer won't get trading exp. If you are looking for money then just go with bounty hunting or accept the running sensor package contract. Survey contract is great but require skill.
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You won't know the data if you never obtain it before. So the only way is you go around every single market in the game to obtain that info. What are they selling. What are they producing.
For now, trading isn't that profitable, even with contract. Beside, you are the only one that get exp from it. Your officer won't get trading exp. If you are looking for money then just go with bounty hunting or accept the running sensor package contract. Survey contract is great but require skill.
I have been to every system with a presence and visited every station/planet with a market. It does not seem to make a diff once the data changes. I am guessing you would have to make frequent trips to every station/ planet to keep the data current. It is not practical as the data changes faster than you can fly around collecting it.
I think in the future there will have to be some way to get remote access to said trade date, to make trading any use at all.
It would even be cool if I had some way of checking to see what items a base produced even without the updated info.
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I think in the future there will have to be some way to get remote access to said trade date, to make trading any use at all.
Isn't there a way to bug comm relays? I'm not sure what information they provide though.
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You only need to visit them once to know what are they having in their market. Price won't update until recent visit or bug the comm relay.
This window is probably what you are looking for.
http://imgur.com/a/TcfFT
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Yeah, intel on prices is a bit sketchy. You can track down where big producers are by checking the planets supplying a market, but there is no guarantee that prices will be decent.
Trading was quite profitable in the past, but in this version the economy is a wonderfully complex, dynamic system that the player doesn't interact with at all.
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Yeah, intel on prices is a bit sketchy. You can track down where big producers are by checking the planets supplying a market, but there is no guarantee that prices will be decent.
Trading was quite profitable in the past, but in this version the economy is a wonderfully complex, dynamic system that the player doesn't interact with at all.
I think trade can still be profitable but you would probably need a fleet of Atlas class freighters to do it.
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You need to take your burn speed, supplies and fuel consumption into account too. Atlas work best with short route until you get +5 burn speed from skill. I never use Atlas to do trading before. It seem to work best at hauling my loot around.
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Supplies and Fuel are such a big deal now, you'd have to make incredible profit to offset it. Even if you run a maintenace cheap pure trader fleet, and you manage you evade combat, a short dip into a storm is going to eat a huge amount of money in supplies - and if you take a longer route to avoid long stretches of deep hyperspace the fuel cost is gonna get you.
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It is possible, though initially quite risky (as you'll need to run with very thin margins of error to make a reasonable profit in a reasonable time) to make money off of trade. The trick is to make sure you know where all the big and reliable consumers and producers are. Precise quantities of supply and demand may vary, but market conditions rarely do, outside of special events and food shortages.
The biggest obstacle to a prospective trader are all these damn pirates running around. It's even worse if you're playing with mods, because then you've probably got Underworld, and thus you probably have the Cabal flying around, too. Not to mention that the pirates and Pathers will have a nastier and more varied toolkit. The resources you need to invest in to fend them off reliably will seriously cut into your profit margins. Minimizing the escort ships you need by making your efficient freighters and tankers double as converted carriers might prove worthwhile, since it will provide some reasonable combat power without increasing the amount of credits you spend on supplies and fuel.
Procurement contracts can be quite profitable, but access to them is fairly random.
Between needing to keep track of where the suppliers and consumers are, how quickly it takes to move between them, and the knowledge and skill needed to cost-efficiently fend off various groups of pirates and terrorists, you already need to be quite skilled and knowledgeable about the game to pull it off, at which point you're still not pulling in any more money than you would make off of bounty hunting, considerably less than you would from exploration, and odds are you're having less fun along the way.
Trading is thus mainly opportunistic, something that mostly happens when you notice that the present situation is set up conveniently. For instance, if you're in one of the big Luddic systems (for whatever reason) and a food shortage occurs or you happen to be heading in the direction of Chicomoztoc, you might as well pick up a big quantity of food or domestic goods and sell it there. Or, more likely, if you happen to be at or very close to a market with a given commodity in surplus and you spot a procurement contract for that commodity.
It's also a decent source of income if you happen to be doing a pirate run. Of course, then you don't actually have to pay for the commodities, though finding an appropriate target can itself be an annoying process.
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Cabal can be turned off in the mod settings file. I think they're a little OP and don't mesh well with the feel of the vanilla factions, so I almost never have them enabled.
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Isn't there a way to bug comm relays? I'm not sure what information they provide though.
Generally, more cryptic or unintelligible spam. Occasionally, an advanced warning on a relatively insignificant event you may or may not be able to exploit effectively due to your current circumstances. I consider not bugging the relays a spam filter.
Minimizing the escort ships you need by making your efficient freighters and tankers double as converted carriers might prove worthwhile, since it will provide some reasonable combat power without increasing the amount of credits you spend on supplies and fuel.
I tried this exercise once. It only works if the enemy fleet is no bigger than yours and if you build a mastermind/carrier specialist that can Fighter Strike everyone on demand. That requires Operations Center hullmod on the flagship at the bare minimum, and you probably want at least Command & Control 2 for more CP (because you burn through CP very quickly) and some of the fighter skills (which you need to take anyway to get Converted Hangar in the first place). It is a good idea to bring a warship as a flagship to tank for the civilians. Although if the player actually builds such a character to make this work, then instead of hauling commodities, it is better to build a fleet of combat carriers and wipe enemy fleets with your superior carrier power. Carriers are very strong in this release if built for it.
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The idea there wasn't so much to wipe out the enemy fleets as opposed to providing some cover while the trade fleet itself bravely runs away.
But overall, yeah. Not terribly viable. And with mods, there are nastier things out there than P-variant Wolves.
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Tariffs are also cutting into the profit margins.
Someone suggested merchant skills in the industry tree - I agree
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Wouldn't that be more likely to go into Leadership, if anything?
(All the aptitudes other than Combat lack skills, at the moment, and I'd assume Combat is also inevitably getting some sort of revision at/before the 1.0 release.)
Dumping it into Industry would make sense as a makeshift solution, but we're past the quick patches and hotfixes stage, so Industry is probably getting more competitive with more of its own stuff in the next version anyway.
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Supplies and Fuel are such a big deal now, you'd have to make incredible profit to offset it. Even if you run a maintenace cheap pure trader fleet, and you manage you evade combat, a short dip into a storm is going to eat a huge amount of money in supplies - and if you take a longer route to avoid long stretches of deep hyperspace the fuel cost is gonna get you.
There should be trade lanes in this game. Large systems need to have less-than-direct routes that are free of warp storms. You'll more likely to encounter pirates, privateer and patrols using these route.
Backwater outposts on the other hand will depend on captains to make their own choices.
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The current problems are:
- Tarrifs are too huge
- Supplies (and to a lesser extent, fuel) eat a LOT of money
This means that trade runs LOOK profitable, but then you loose 30% to tarrifs and got to buy supplies and fuel that eats your profits.
You have a Leadership skills that lowers supply consumption (BIG thing) and a Tech skill that lower fuel consumption (less important, fuel is a lot cheaper than supplies)
I think there's a hullmod that reduces fuel consumption at the expense of Burn Level, but that might be a mod. However, do that and you're now prey for pirates, since you can't out-run them.
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In all fairness bulk goods trade being unprofitable without undertaking large risks for a small independent trader is very, very realistic. The price differential for goods is in economic terms a combination of the economically acceptable risks across the company, the opportunity costs of the company's assets, and the operational costs of moving the goods. A large firm can spread the risk across its entire operation(i.e. they have 10 ships with a 10% chance of failure, which means they will usually have 8-10 successful runs, while a small firm with 1 ship has a 10% chance of total failure if they run a narrow margin). Their assets are generally specialized, meaning that the opportunity cost of using them for shipping is lower, and they benefit from lower operational costs. Small concerns can try and eat back at the margins by taking more risk, in trading having fewer escorts, maintaining a smaller capital reserve, shipping more volatile goods, etc. But in general as a independent operator we shouldn't really be able to compete on a major shipping lane.
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Trading has always been difficult in Starsector, but version 0.8 and up just completely broke supply and demand to the point that you can't really make any money off of any kind of trading except delivery contracts, and even then you need to be careful and check the prices.
It'll get fixed eventually. Possibly not until the next major version comes out.
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Main problem is a lack of price data. Unless you constantly burn fuel and check all orbitals for change.
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Main problem is a lack of price data. Unless you constantly burn fuel and check all orbitals for change.
Right, I'd like to really delve into this issue before declaring it broken by the release number. It's not as straightforward as shooting down pirates for cash but it doesn't mean it's impossible.
With my current character I went 100% industry, a bit of tech, and some leadership. All my trade contracts have been very profitable so far and it's because of a few additional factors.
Salvaging has been an immense help in staving off the cost of supplies and fuel. I run deliveries in systems with pirate bases so on my way out, I always hover around fights and play the vulture. I found a Dominator cruiser with busted sensors just by salvaging!
Additionally, although salvaging warships often gives you subpar assets, it does not matter if you run a massacred herd of (D) freighters. I outfit them with sensor equipment since they're boned in a fight, with or without the 2-3 PD weapons.
This also means you have to be adept at playing the sensor game and flying under the radar. Avoid civilian hulls and other mods that make you more visible. Ensure you have a high burn speed.
Lastly, through salvaging you end up with a lot of additional goods. Store them somewhere and wait for a contract to come up. You have a much higher profit margin when you're patient enough to wait for the right contract.