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General Discussion / Re: how trading actually works
« on: August 24, 2019, 03:16:10 PM »
Legal trade being unprofitable is completely reasonable given what we know of the universe, and from a gameplay design perspective.
In a lore prospective, /all/ of the major factions have their OWN trading convoys to supply their demands. They don't need you, the player, supplying them unless its a dire emergency (due to, say, a strong pirate fleet attacking their convoy). Thats why you don't see a lot of /normal/ trading fleets in the game; you usually see smugglers, scavengers, privateers, bounty hunters, and the occasional independent trading convoy.
They don't trust you, they don't need you, and they need to feed their own before you. So they put up tariffs to get profit for themselves while still giving you the "illusion" that they care about you and your goods. This is why you can only make real money if you either create opportunities (killing convoys with transponder off then "coincidentally" coming in with transponder on with the same goods and trading to them for a trading bonus rep and lots of mad stacks of cash) or taking advantage of opportunities (pirate activity, convoy attacked by pirates / hostile faction, procurement missions due to shortages both manmade and events periodically made because an accountant rounded a 0 in the wrong spot).
This is understandable both in real life and in the game, considering the game's economy is more based around war time economy, which would absolutely cut out the middle man (private corporations / private individuals trading) in favor of their own military doing the trading / protecting of goods and logistics unless they are desperate (which is when the criminal elements ((you)) step in to help soak up the shortages).
In a gameplay design element, as stated by Alex himself, the entire point of Starsector is COMBAT, not money. Making money is important, yes, but you make money because it leads to combat. You take the procurement mission because there is combat to be had (pirates, hostile factions, luddics, etc). You take a bounty because it pays for your expenses that you incur in combat with some money left over to buy another combat ship to do better bounties. You explore because it lets you get the endgame content you need for colonies (blueprints, pristine nanoforge, synchotron) so you can afford the best ships in the game without bankrupting yourself, which lets you fight the best fights (Ordos red system fights, capital and star fortress slug fests in core worlds, etc).
Making trading profitable when legal wouldn't make you enemies with the factions, which would lead to less combat. It would be a point and click adventure and relatively simple with no drawbacks with the right setup. That doesn't sit well both gameplay design wise and in lore wise considering the rapid decay of the sector.
On the topic of making money, if you are having a rough time doing it, here's a guide how that can be done even if you do the hardest scavenger start (wayfarer + shepard):
- Immediately put militarized subsystems on your ships.
- Put points into navigation and loadout design (so you can later get 10 + OP and + 1 free burn, which is important).
- Rush to a Tri Tachyon planet to get investment credits (check Tri Tachyon planet bars till you find a man/woman you can ask for investment credits). This will give you about 200-250K in initial credits + what you started with (around 32K unless you bought extra supplies and fuel before going to a Tri Tachyon planet).
- Rush to a Luddic Path planet.
- Buy every single LP frigate in this order: Hound, Cerberus, Lasher.
- Hounds will be cheap and carry a decent cargo hold, and have inbuilt shielded cargo holds (smuggling) AND Safety Overrides (important!).
- RESTORE ALL OF THEM. The cost is big, but the investment in restoring them NOW will pay off a lot LATER.
- Put expanded cargo holds and erratic fuel injector onto all of them. This ups your cargo so you use less ships for more cargo, shields more of your contraband, and erratic fuel injector makes you even FASTER in combat (with safety override already making you pretty fast).
- Buy at least one dram and put Safety Override and Eratic fuel injector on it (you can't afford more fuel carrying hull mod till you get the + 10 OP from level 3 loadout design).
- Buy HIGH VALUE items, since you have a small cargo hold. The less items you hold that are valued for more, the better. Basically, avoid ores, metal, food. Buy organs, drugs, heavy armaments, supplies.
- Hang around pirate planets and luddic path planets; they almost always have shortages because their convoys get intercepted /all the time/. And they are usually weak as *** compared to all the factions, so you can either kill them or avoid them.
- If you get stopped by a big fleet (pirate armada, big faction fleet / picket you can't escape), and you don't want to get scanned / can't get scanned, then immediately try to disengage from combat. Its a small hit to rep that you can easily make back, and because you have safety overrides on very small and fast frigates (which makes them even faster), drams with SO (which makes them super fast) and erratic fuel injector hull mod (which makes you even FASTER), you will escape unharmed 99% of the time unless you get hit by a death fleet. And this early in the game, unless you literally sleep walk into Chrzomatic or whatever its called, the level 8 hegemony military base, you won't get hit by a death fleet this early.
Congratulations, you are now a professional smuggler who can run away from unfavorable fights, engage in favourable fights against small time smugglers (since safety overrided luddic path lashers are amazing against almost all small fleets and a decent amount of medium sized fleets), and can make huge profits due to your low sensor profile, allowing you to go dark right under the noses of almost every faction.
There are different methods to making money, such as Buffalo augmented drive field + militarized subsystems + navigation lv 3 speed running, speed running fast cruisers and destroyers and blowing up faction convoys then selling their shortages right back to them for HUGE cash, mass raiding weak planets then taking the procurement missions to feed back the supplies they lost, etc.
There are many different ways to make money, but they are all spawned because legal ways of making cash is no fun and not profitable. Just get creative and play around with the economy system and you will figure out the method that works best for you.
In a lore prospective, /all/ of the major factions have their OWN trading convoys to supply their demands. They don't need you, the player, supplying them unless its a dire emergency (due to, say, a strong pirate fleet attacking their convoy). Thats why you don't see a lot of /normal/ trading fleets in the game; you usually see smugglers, scavengers, privateers, bounty hunters, and the occasional independent trading convoy.
They don't trust you, they don't need you, and they need to feed their own before you. So they put up tariffs to get profit for themselves while still giving you the "illusion" that they care about you and your goods. This is why you can only make real money if you either create opportunities (killing convoys with transponder off then "coincidentally" coming in with transponder on with the same goods and trading to them for a trading bonus rep and lots of mad stacks of cash) or taking advantage of opportunities (pirate activity, convoy attacked by pirates / hostile faction, procurement missions due to shortages both manmade and events periodically made because an accountant rounded a 0 in the wrong spot).
This is understandable both in real life and in the game, considering the game's economy is more based around war time economy, which would absolutely cut out the middle man (private corporations / private individuals trading) in favor of their own military doing the trading / protecting of goods and logistics unless they are desperate (which is when the criminal elements ((you)) step in to help soak up the shortages).
In a gameplay design element, as stated by Alex himself, the entire point of Starsector is COMBAT, not money. Making money is important, yes, but you make money because it leads to combat. You take the procurement mission because there is combat to be had (pirates, hostile factions, luddics, etc). You take a bounty because it pays for your expenses that you incur in combat with some money left over to buy another combat ship to do better bounties. You explore because it lets you get the endgame content you need for colonies (blueprints, pristine nanoforge, synchotron) so you can afford the best ships in the game without bankrupting yourself, which lets you fight the best fights (Ordos red system fights, capital and star fortress slug fests in core worlds, etc).
Making trading profitable when legal wouldn't make you enemies with the factions, which would lead to less combat. It would be a point and click adventure and relatively simple with no drawbacks with the right setup. That doesn't sit well both gameplay design wise and in lore wise considering the rapid decay of the sector.
On the topic of making money, if you are having a rough time doing it, here's a guide how that can be done even if you do the hardest scavenger start (wayfarer + shepard):
- Immediately put militarized subsystems on your ships.
- Put points into navigation and loadout design (so you can later get 10 + OP and + 1 free burn, which is important).
- Rush to a Tri Tachyon planet to get investment credits (check Tri Tachyon planet bars till you find a man/woman you can ask for investment credits). This will give you about 200-250K in initial credits + what you started with (around 32K unless you bought extra supplies and fuel before going to a Tri Tachyon planet).
- Rush to a Luddic Path planet.
- Buy every single LP frigate in this order: Hound, Cerberus, Lasher.
- Hounds will be cheap and carry a decent cargo hold, and have inbuilt shielded cargo holds (smuggling) AND Safety Overrides (important!).
- RESTORE ALL OF THEM. The cost is big, but the investment in restoring them NOW will pay off a lot LATER.
- Put expanded cargo holds and erratic fuel injector onto all of them. This ups your cargo so you use less ships for more cargo, shields more of your contraband, and erratic fuel injector makes you even FASTER in combat (with safety override already making you pretty fast).
- Buy at least one dram and put Safety Override and Eratic fuel injector on it (you can't afford more fuel carrying hull mod till you get the + 10 OP from level 3 loadout design).
- Buy HIGH VALUE items, since you have a small cargo hold. The less items you hold that are valued for more, the better. Basically, avoid ores, metal, food. Buy organs, drugs, heavy armaments, supplies.
- Hang around pirate planets and luddic path planets; they almost always have shortages because their convoys get intercepted /all the time/. And they are usually weak as *** compared to all the factions, so you can either kill them or avoid them.
- If you get stopped by a big fleet (pirate armada, big faction fleet / picket you can't escape), and you don't want to get scanned / can't get scanned, then immediately try to disengage from combat. Its a small hit to rep that you can easily make back, and because you have safety overrides on very small and fast frigates (which makes them even faster), drams with SO (which makes them super fast) and erratic fuel injector hull mod (which makes you even FASTER), you will escape unharmed 99% of the time unless you get hit by a death fleet. And this early in the game, unless you literally sleep walk into Chrzomatic or whatever its called, the level 8 hegemony military base, you won't get hit by a death fleet this early.
Congratulations, you are now a professional smuggler who can run away from unfavorable fights, engage in favourable fights against small time smugglers (since safety overrided luddic path lashers are amazing against almost all small fleets and a decent amount of medium sized fleets), and can make huge profits due to your low sensor profile, allowing you to go dark right under the noses of almost every faction.
There are different methods to making money, such as Buffalo augmented drive field + militarized subsystems + navigation lv 3 speed running, speed running fast cruisers and destroyers and blowing up faction convoys then selling their shortages right back to them for HUGE cash, mass raiding weak planets then taking the procurement missions to feed back the supplies they lost, etc.
There are many different ways to make money, but they are all spawned because legal ways of making cash is no fun and not profitable. Just get creative and play around with the economy system and you will figure out the method that works best for you.