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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Commission welfare  (Read 6113 times)

Pushover

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Re: Commission welfare
« Reply #15 on: April 04, 2021, 12:18:11 PM »

Commissions are completely unnecessary if you just take a bit of time to go trading. I was able to make ~10m within the first year, starting from a Wolf start just by trading, mostly shipping supplies, armaments, and drugs to pirates and pathers. I'm willing to bet that trading earns 10x whatever your commission would earn, and IMO trading is too strong right now.

It's pretty common to either find a place that is buying 800 drugs for 300+, with you able to buy them for ~200 each, resulting in a 80,000 profit for that run at minimum. Under more extreme shortages (such as Chalcedon dealing with pirate activity, or losing a shipment), colonies can have shortages on the order of 2500 supplies at over 300(!) (~250k profit), or 800-1200 drugs at prices up to 600(!), ~400 heavy armaments for over 1000, ~300 marines for 500, etc. Luxury goods sometimes also reach around 200 credits per unit, with around 1000 in shortages. There's tons of opportunities to make huge amounts of money. Occasional bar contracts or larger hauling missions can also earn thousands.

Later on, having a commission hurts your colony value, since hostilities reduce access. But at that point, it barely matters since you can be swimming in cash from trading, or even simply losing 10% of 100k each month is not *that* bad.
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Space Cowboy

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Re: Commission welfare
« Reply #16 on: April 04, 2021, 12:55:08 PM »

Bump, I completely agree with the OP. Also, if you want to go for what I would call a "true sandbox" playstyle and keep a small (and maybe neutral) fleet questing around the galaxy it is not possible. You have to scale with the npc fleets into obese/ expensive fleets with tons of capitals and officers. It feeelsbadman when I just want to have a couple cruisers and some frigates and focus on roleplay.
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Linnis

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Re: Commission welfare
« Reply #17 on: April 04, 2021, 02:32:51 PM »


P.S.  What commission would be useful for is building up rep with your employer fast, which means you can stealth raid your employer's worlds for supplies, fuel, and drugs and not care about the rep hit because you will build it up back fast just by killing their enemies.

After 20 cycles of messing around this is what I found to be the most profitable thing to do, also sometimes system bounties given by agents on popup pirate bases can net you 30ish rep easy. But you make almost no creds doing that. But like you said, just spend the rep raiding their worlds and selling their stuff....

Feels wrong, but it kind of make sense in a sick twisted way.
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WillDigForFood

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Re: Commission welfare
« Reply #18 on: April 04, 2021, 09:44:17 PM »

Commissions are completely unnecessary if you just take a bit of time to go trading. I was able to make ~10m within the first year, starting from a Wolf start just by trading, mostly shipping supplies, armaments, and drugs to pirates and pathers. I'm willing to bet that trading earns 10x whatever your commission would earn, and IMO trading is too strong right now.

I've had similar results - 5 million credits earned by the start of c.207, with the Wolf start and  with me fooling around and looking into habitable planet prospecting missions close to the core. Smuggling to the Path/Pirates is incredibly lucrative, but it feels like a genuine time tax on the start of the game (still, with 5 mil in the bank that fast you can pretty rapidly pivot into any sort of playthrough you want.)
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Radicaljack

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Re: Commission welfare
« Reply #19 on: April 04, 2021, 11:05:49 PM »

I agree that supplies and fuel should be more available, but honestly you can pay for a years worth of expenses doing a couple drug and heavy arms runs and raiding each pirate base you sell too. money this time around is never hard to come by and if you want shiny big ships you can have them with no real cost issues, i went exploring with dessies and frigs and a lucky phantom/revenant derelict find and had a blast being a small gang for a bit, didn't even worry about money because the second i got back the drugs and guns still needed dealing.
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Sarissofoi

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Re: Commission welfare
« Reply #20 on: April 04, 2021, 11:56:34 PM »

>Not playing a spacer start where you need to pay child support

Locklave

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Re: Commission welfare
« Reply #21 on: April 05, 2021, 02:28:03 AM »

Commissions are completely unnecessary if you just take a bit of time to go trading. I was able to make ~10m within the first year, starting from a Wolf start just by trading, mostly shipping supplies, armaments, and drugs to pirates and pathers. I'm willing to bet that trading earns 10x whatever your commission would earn, and IMO trading is too strong right now.

#1 That depends on rng of excess and shortages occuring
#2 You are still depending on the 1st of 3 years of free money
#3 You are doing nothing but trading for 1 year
#4 That is a specific playstyle that doesn't do missions or anything else inbetween
#5 It sounds like you are talking about the last version of the game and not .95a, the market is more stable now reducing profits... making this entire post based on out of date information and not "right now"
« Last Edit: April 05, 2021, 02:29:59 AM by Locklave »
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sillynimbus

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Re: Commission welfare
« Reply #22 on: April 05, 2021, 02:47:10 AM »

bro what

1. buy buffalo with shielded cargo holds and install insulated engines
2. buy low sell high
3. buy paragon with your 3 mil

is there a step you're stumbling on or something
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Pushover

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Re: Commission welfare
« Reply #23 on: April 05, 2021, 03:54:13 AM »

Commissions are completely unnecessary if you just take a bit of time to go trading. I was able to make ~10m within the first year, starting from a Wolf start just by trading, mostly shipping supplies, armaments, and drugs to pirates and pathers. I'm willing to bet that trading earns 10x whatever your commission would earn, and IMO trading is too strong right now.

#1 That depends on rng of excess and shortages occuring
#2 You are still depending on the 1st of 3 years of free money
#3 You are doing nothing but trading for 1 year
#4 That is a specific playstyle that doesn't do missions or anything else inbetween
#5 It sounds like you are talking about the last version of the game and not .95a, the market is more stable now reducing profits... making this entire post based on out of date information and not "right now"
#1 is a guarantee with certain markets. Pathers will have a constant shortage of supplies and other goods, allowing you to sell for no less than ~160 per supply (low access due to hostilities with other factions means that they cannot import enough of anything really). Any trade disruption or pirate activity will raise the price further. I was maybe a bit lucky to have Pirate activity in the Pather's system for several months. Pirate trade fleets are far and away the most common trade fleet to die, meaning pirates are most likely to run into trade shortages. Umbra in particular struggles a lot with trade fleets due to the number of Diktat patrols in Askonia. Easy money buying excess volatiles and selling to the (near constant) shortage in Sindria. Even if there isn't a shortage, you are usually buying the excess Volatiles at 100 per, and selling at 200, for a quick cash in. Lobster is also quick cash, as any place facing a luxury good shortage will generally buy them at 200+, when you buy them for 80-120 after tariffs (worth picking up the ones on the open market).
#2 The total stipend is 12 * 15000 = 180k. That's not a lot in the scheme of things. Yeah, it's helpful getting going in the first month so you can get your first Buffalo. I did do a little bit of combat at the beginning, fighting Pirates around Garnir with the initial Corvus system bounty, but after I had enough to get a Buffalo, it was time to head out with a pile of stuff (IIRC I loaded up on Supplies and Marines, and ended up burning a SP to disengage from some Pathers who got aggressive when I tried to sell them stuff). After your first 'real' trade, you are usually sitting on like 50k or so, which is enough to start covering a lot of shortages.
#3 Sure, except I'm also shopping for weapons and ships (by the end of it I had a bunch of cash, a fair bit less than 10m, but 2 Conquests, an Atlas, 3 Collosuses, an Eagle, a XIV Falcon, 2 Tempests, a Prometheus, a Phaeton and an Apogee, and some random destroyers, plus an acceptable collection of weapons (shopping for HVDs, Maulers, Needlers, etc). Basically, I just skipped all the early combat and moved straight into the 'early capital ships' stage.
#4 I mean... what missions are you talking about? I'd take advantage of procurement and hauling missions, and various bar events for ships (bought the Eagle and Atlas, raided for the Falcon)
#5 The market is hardly more stable. I was on RC11 or RC12 for that particular game. As mentioned before, there are guaranteed shortages of supplies, fuel, marines, and drugs on Chalcedon due to insufficient access. You could call it a bug, but it's the system performing as written. Pirates and Pathers face high access penalties due to being hostile to most of the sector. This means that they can't import/export enough stuff, so they face shortages and excesses everywhere.
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WeiTuLo

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Re: Commission welfare
« Reply #24 on: April 05, 2021, 09:43:52 AM »

Recently, I discovered raiding enemy stations for supplies and profit. It can be extremely profitable.
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Locklave

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Re: Commission welfare
« Reply #25 on: April 05, 2021, 01:20:36 PM »

/snip

Although I don't totally disagree with you and I acknowledge I was overstating my case allow me to simply say

smuggling + commission > smuggling

Everything + commission is better. Because it's free money. If you stop smuggling to explore and gather blueprints your cash drops constantly, unless you have a commission.
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Jet Black

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Re: Commission welfare
« Reply #26 on: April 05, 2021, 01:40:04 PM »

It just dawned on me that I completely forgot to join a faction in my .95a play through. I got a bunch of cargo ships and just started trading.. lol It would have been so much easier had I joined one. Once the bounty rewards get fixed there wont be any reason to complain about money honestly. Without trading/transport and commission there are very few ways to make any decent money right now.

Actually I lied. You can start raiding. But the caveat is that you still need storage space, its a good side hustle if youre already set up to do trade/transport. Picking up thousands of domestic goods etc and dropping them in a black market of a colony with a deficit is very lucrative.

Side note, I usually make a killing doing surveying, you need a couple ships set up with survey gear though and that efficiency hull mod.

Right now I'm sitting on 3mil with a little over 10k storage space just gathering up and selling whatever I can find or buy low. Losing 25k every month to crew, etc.  but making a ton more.
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