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[Hiruma Kai]

A point I'd like to make is trade credits aren't free.  You're still taking real life time, and spending it flying between planets.  That's like saying bounty credits are free or exploration credits are free.  They also aren't unlimited in any given time frame, since if you do enough trading, you'll satisfy the shortage and the prices drop to normal (and even go to surplus if you keep selling).  Now they are pretty safe if you're running SO UI Hounds, and are certainly more time efficient than low end bounties, but I tend to think thats what you want out of something that can be done with the ships handed to you after a fleet wipe.

I will also note if you put a cap on money that is based on production or population of the planet, you'll rapidly only have Chico and the size 7 planets as a place to trade in realistic amounts.  It also raises the question, should the amount a planet capably of paying based on the planet itself, or the faction that owns it.  Credits can be transferred instantly via relay (hence payouts for certain missions).  If Jangala is in fuel debt, and you sell to the military market, is it just the planet paying or is the Hegemony and the financial power of Chicomoztoc behind it?

However, if you want to go down that route and try to figure out the right sliding scale, the natural mechanism is the amount the planet demands from the player before the shortage is considered over while in deficit.  You can't make infinite amounts of credits off a planet in finite time in the current game, because you eventually stop the shortage, so just make that point happen quicker.  I think tweaking the current limitation method rather than creating an entire new one on top of it is probably simpler and easier to implement and maintain.  It functionally does the same thing.

Off hand, I don't know if the current deficit is capped or determined from the maximum production/demands of the planet or not, or if it's always the same for any given shortage?  I know it always seems like -2 supplied to my colony per loss of NPC transport fleet.  One fact we should have before putting on a cap is, what is the current effective cap?  How many credits can you actually pull off long term from a particular trade run?  Like if you fully removed the shortage state from the planet the previous month, how many credits can you make off it the following month?

[Goumindong]

All of that is true but

You can raid to induce shortages

The total profit is so high it really obviates a lot of the other content. I might “only” average 300k month doing it over the course of a game but that would include me doing a lot of other stuff.

When I need money I make a run of heavy weapons to Chalcedon and make a cool 500k.

I the mean time I can just stockpile drugs (never get searched because don’t do black market in places that care) until some pirate planet is paying 550k average for 1000.

[cytokine]

if you want to go down that route and try to figure out the right sliding scale, the natural mechanism is the amount the planet demands from the player before the shortage is considered over while in deficit.  You can't make infinite amounts of credits off a planet in finite time in the current game, because you eventually stop the shortage, so just make that point happen quicker.

There's this existing mechanic, where, if you were to trade on the open market, you effect shortages, shown by these little icons, with green outlines. You can directly increase things like stability of a planet by selling food, consumer goods and the like.
But, black market trades don't have that effect. I never sell anything on the open market, so for me those little icons only function as a hint for having clicked on the wrong market button... Maybe making the black market trades have the identical effect would alleviate shortages in the medium term, and tune down demand a bit. https://imgur.com/UNefDGA

One fact we should have before putting on a cap is, what is the current effective cap?  How many credits can you actually pull off long term from a particular trade run?  Like if you fully removed the shortage state from the planet the previous month, how many credits can you make off it the following month?

Disrupting the orbital works at Kapteyn, and disrupting the starports at Umbra, Qaras, Chalcedon & Epiphany makes about 4 million in profits per round tour, mostly trading supplies and armaments, along with some fuel and drugs.
~
Overall, I think most trading with pirates is balanced and engaging, since there is limitations from distance, or danger, "temporariness", limited cargo capacity, limited supply, or limited demand. Drugs and fuel in particular having high profitability but also many limitations.

"Supplies for Kantas/LP" is really the main exception. Small distance to Maxios/Kazeron, low danger, fairly compact cargo, constant over time, large supply, huge demand. LP could be a lot more dangerous IMO. Now, if all you've got are two Wolves and a Mudskipper stuffed with supplies, the LP will pick a fight with you. But more than two Wolves, and their patrols are just too small to engage. Random scavengers attacking you en route is pretty neat, but it only happens very rarely. The mechanics are all there, they just need to be tuned up a bit IMO.

I used to play a lot of m&b viking conquest, and that game had a sort of bootstrap option where you took the ferry to holland and bought cheap wine. It was sort of free money if you got stuck at zero, but supply was limited, and the crossing fees meant you couldn't build an army while doing it. That sort of beginner trading needs to become obsolete naturally somehow.

[Hiruma Kai]

All of that is true but

You can raid to induce shortages

Raiding at least requires interacting with other mechanics, specifically having enough marines on hand and ships with crew capacity which cost upkeep, having to wait time before you can dock and trade again at the raided station, and especially in the case of pirates and Luddic Path planets, worrying about decivilization due to low stability, hitting Chalcedon even once typically sends it to 2 stability.  I'm fine with raiding producing higher profits than natural trading alone would produce, since it has a higher investment and more expenses/time/risk of destroying the planet associated with it.

The total profit is so high it really obviates a lot of the other content. I might “only” average 300k month doing it over the course of a game but that would include me doing a lot of other stuff.

When I need money I make a run of heavy weapons to Chalcedon and make a cool 500k.

But I don't think you are running heavy weapons to Chalcedon non-stop and making 5 million profit in 5 minutes or anything like that, right?  I believe there's some kind of ceiling based on time elapsed for the background supply/demand calculations updating.

All I'm saying is if you want to reduce profits, reduce the amount of deficit induced by a single minus red supply icon on the smaller or less developed worlds.  If Chalcedon capped out a 300 units deficit instead of 600, and 900 credits per unit instead 1200 credits, then your profit of 500k drops to like 150-200k.  No need for credit caps that impact other profit making methods, like exploration runs and selling blueprints or colony booster items, or forcing you to be friendly the Hegemony and going to Chico or the size 7s as the only sensible places to sell.

The question comes down to, how much profit should one be able to make on the lower risk campaign layer tasks?  As it is right now, the main story line contact hands you between 60-90k for each mission shuttling between core worlds in a single hound with no credits invested in cargo (takes all of 30-60 seconds to accomplish), and commission pay between 25-95k per month no matter what you do (and if you're in the deep black exploring, the potential extra hostile factions makes almost no difference).  If deficit trading is over performing, it's probably no more than a factor of 2.  I'd certainly be wary of creating a new mechanic that caps small planet purchasing power from the player to 100,000 credits for example, which would make selling an exploration haul a pain. At that level, trading with the planet is about as profitable as an exploration or shuttle mission.  And if it's capped at 500k, that doesn't preclude the drop off 1000 drugs for 500k which is pretty close to profit now, and still potentially makes some large hauls with good survey data a pain to sell.

In answering that question, you need to keep in mind the game is intended to be played on iron man, and in a mid-game fleet wipe situation, you want the player to get back up on their feet relatively quickly.  To be honest, these days story points and skill points are more of a power limiter than credits (which is why I believe Alex was going to make ships with s-mods that get destroyed and not recovered provide bonus XP, as well as tweaking the bonus XP earning rate, at least the last time I read about it), so relatively easy non-combat credits may be intentional.  Late game colonies profits (or even mid-game colonies in cryosleeper systems) make me think that is true.

But, black market trades don't have that effect.

They kind of do, although the sell interface doesn't show it.  In a vanilla game, if I go to Chaledon, and look at the deficit and price per unit before selling 1000 supplies while in deficit, and after, the deficit number has gone down by 1000, and the amount they are willing to pay also goes down per unit.  If I sell them 20,000 units as an extreme example, the sell price per unit drops to something like 50 credits per unit, well past excess price stages and certainly not making a net profit.  I admit planet interface still shows red supply icons, but the deficit/pay significantly higher prices condition did disappear.  So the mechanism limiting profits is definitely there.  The next month when the colony information updates, it still wasn't in a deficit state (i.e. really high sell price) but only at ~80 credits per unit sold, despite having a bunch of red supply icons, so I'm not exactly sure what is going on under the hood.  It may just be a graphical thing (possibly intentional, if you're doing black market trades, how does the colony know how many supplies are actually available if no one is counting?), but I'm not sure.

[AcaMetis]

They kind of do, although the sell interface doesn't show it.

If you check a market's commodities in the colony screen or the greater commodities list (I forget the formal term for that one, the thing that lists all produces and consumers of a particular commodity) it will actually say how many items a market is missing when there's a shortage. If there's no amount listed that means the shortage has already been supplied through black market trading, which doesn't resolve actual shortages a colony is experiencing, so the red icons remain to denote that the colony's stability/industries are still being hampered from a lack of available goods.

[cytokine]

I believe there's some kind of ceiling based on time elapsed for the background supply/demand calculations updating. All I'm saying is if you want to reduce profits, reduce the amount of deficit induced by a single minus red supply icon

So I did some A/B testing on Qaras with a busted spaceport, having complete deficits, selling either on the open market or black market. And contrary to what I expected,  it did not effect pricing differently, at all. Selling on the open market did improve colony stats like stability and defense. That was the only difference. After exactly 30 days both the 'pricing effect' and the 'surplus effect' wore off abruptly.

As a sidenote, I still think that the black market should have the 'surplus effect', but for a different reason. Because otherwise, someone is paying for zero benefit. In my testing, Qaras was paying 2 million per month, and getting a still nonfunctional military base and heavy batteries. Where do the imports go? And where does the money come from? Why don't these pirates ditch their rust buckets and buy some paragons for all that cash? It's just wacky.

Anyhow... regarding "the amount of deficit", the UI mentions something called a "batch" which determines deficits, e.g. supplies have a batch size of 750, and armaments of 200. E.g. Qaras needs 3 units of armaments for Heavy Batteries, so the monthly deficit was 3*200=600. Reducing all the batch sizes could work for reducing profits from trade. Or reducing price sensitivity I suppose...

But I still think the root of the problem is something other than maximum profits being too high. Most "boring" price differences stem from low accessibility ratings, or low in-faction production. And a cap on trade profits would be a bit of a band-aid solution to that. Pirates and LP simply have an economy that's too weak, and are to vulnerable to raids, while being too easy to trade with. They need higher imports, and to be a bit more dangerous to deal with, IMO.

[Brainwright]

Most of the issues mentioned in this thread could be solved by adding basic features of commodities exchanges from real world examples.

Supply and demand are a thing, but the liquidity to pay some poor scav to soak rads on a run from Derinkuyu to Chicomoztoc is how supply meets demand.  So sellers offer contracts on goods they have or want to have in order to grease the wheels of commerce.  Basic contracts can consist of a future, a promise to buy an item at its current price for the credit value of the contract, and an option, a promise to sell a specified amount of item at a particular price.

These can just be items in the market with an expiration date and origin attached.  So 1000 credits ore futures from Derinkuyu would transform into an item that the player can trade at Derinkuyu for the specified item.  The player can be the buyer or the seller, but the seller contracts would likely be handled by trade events from the bar.  The item takes the specified item from your inventory when you try to sell it.

Now, what does all this accomplish?  Well, the money taken from the player for the contract becomes capital for trade in general.  That is, it's a cap on how much a market can spend on a particular trade.  During good times, this cap is left alone.  During low stability, the cap is drained for "expenses," and the tariff is increased on cash transactions so that the market is drawing in a steady flow of cash.  That is to say, the cash balance of whatever you buy and sell in a market gets a tariff added.

So there is an incentive to not simply sell everything you have at a market, but instead trade for what you need and what will get you profit at the next stop. 

And what is the next stop?  A commodities exchange!  Yes, here you can not only trade these contracts to people that want to buy them, but you can redeem certain contracts.  There is overhead, but you don't have to actually travel to a place to redeem the contracts.  So now you don't have to be the ghost in the economic machine.  You can build a reliable trade route.

What does this mean for pirates?   It means they have very little capital.  They exist to launder ill-gotten gains into either iller gains that take up less space or legitimate goods at cutthroat prices.  So the player just transfers items at these stations.

The Hegemony can be a gaurantor of stability, granting all markets under their control increased stability.

Tri-Tach can have the commodities exchanges at each of their markets.

The Persean League can be a suspicious mix of both.  One exchange on Kazeron and a roving fleet the moves the stability bonus around League worlds in a way that totally does not solely benefit prices at the exchange.  Totally.

There can be other bonuses, too, and it may seem like a more complicated system, but it is actually a more holistic system, integrating a lot of moving parts into one mechanism.  Accessability, for instance, is something that could be replaced entirely with either reduced tariffs or other reduced penalties to lower stability.  The faction penalty to accessability can instead be a bonus provided by the faction if you are on good terms with them, either giving reduced penalties to fleets lost trading with them or a percentage increase in base capital if you are on their commodities exchange.

Finally, price is no longer just a randomly rotating figure.  In the real world, these contracts come first, and price is derived from them.  The idealized and abstracted economy we currently have here is meant to be boring.  It's conceptualization is for people who have tons of money to make it move the way they want.  Commodities exchanges are meant to provide the money for the people moving the goods, the traders, and even provides ways for them to benefit from trading without traveling to every point in the Persean Sector.

It's just better for the player.

[cytokine]

So much effortposting in this thread. I love it. 

Most of the issues mentioned in this thread could be solved by adding basic features of commodities exchanges from real world examples.

Realism is great... I would definitely want the economy to make more sense. Like,  I still remember building heavy industries and farming at every single colony -- how else would they be self-sustaining --- Oh, right... one single big producer can supply an infinite amount of smaller consumers... somehow. And having a realistic economy means you can use your intuitions to wreck the economies of other factions, so yay realism.

But more realism cant come at the expense of gameplay, or raise the skill floor to much. A game-play loop of "Buy low, sell high" is just immediately comprehensible and rewarding, and it ties together with the main gameplay of "shooting at things until they explode". You buy low, sell high, buy some guns, shoot your guns at things until they explode... Wrapping your head around the futures market, to buy some bigger guns, it's just a bit too much like adulting IMHO. Think of the Steam players! Or god forbid, the console players.

So I can't see financial instruments as a way forward for the devs. I guess more of an optional thing, rather than a foundational one. Stock trading in GTA was a thing people loved to do, for instance.

[Hiruma Kai]

Now, what does all this accomplish?  Well, the money taken from the player for the contract becomes capital for trade in general.  That is, it's a cap on how much a market can spend on a particular trade.  During good times, this cap is left alone.  During low stability, the cap is drained for "expenses," and the tariff is increased on cash transactions so that the market is drawing in a steady flow of cash.  That is to say, the cash balance of whatever you buy and sell in a market gets a tariff added.

So how would this interact with exploration gameplay which is based on bringing back large piles of loot with and tariffs basically only being on the side of the planet spending it's credits(i.e. the planet is draining its credits when it buys goods, so it can't increase the available credits)?  Or pirating gameplay where you hit up NPC fleets carrying valuable cargo in large chunks.  If the player is only ever interacting with the trade system by buying supplies and fuel, and the majority of their trade is dumping goods, survey data, and ship weapons into markets, then capping credits will generally be a negative experience, and the player isn't interested in futures trading or being forced to travel between many core worlds (it's already a pain trying to fuel late game fleets).  At some point, the maximum credits you can extract from the trade system at any given time is still set by the individual planet credit caps, which have to be based off something, right?

As for the original hypothesis of the thread, do we have an idea what the income should be if the player is focusing on credit increasing deficit trading activities?  Like if we're exploiting Pirate/LP trading to the max, but doing no raiding, no personally destabilizing worlds, just letting Pirate/Luddic Path colonies naturally do their thing, how many credits should we expect the player to have from the Wolf/Shepherd start after 1 cycle/year in the current system.  And how does it compare to an exploration focus (with exploration missions) or bounty hunting focus?

Essentially, can we define what an excessive amount is in hard numbers, and what is not an excessive amount?

I'll note the exploration and bounty hunting focus also provide other non-credit benefits, namely potential colony locations, colony items, much higher XP (and thus story point gain), and the occasionally salvaged capital.

For example, I just started a new vanilla game, seed MN-3141592 (in honor of a PI chart), and keeping an eye on the heavy weapon/drug trade opportunities, those really big pay days are not available 100% of the time, plus you have to consider sourcing the things you are using to fulfill the needs.  Like, I grabbed 200 heavy weapons, but then the 1,200 price dropped to 815 because a relief fleet had arrived or something, so my profit was cut in half.  100k isn't bad, but you can also do more than that in 2 quick missions from Galatia.

Maybe we should start a thread which is a race to see the amount of credits (and or credit equivalent stuff like combat useful ships) in a single in-game year based off a single vanilla seed and common wolf/shepherd start without tutorial.

[cytokine]

Maybe we should start a thread which is a race to see the amount of credits (and or credit equivalent stuff like combat useful ships) in a single in-game year based off a single vanilla seed and common wolf/shepherd start without tutorial.

I actually just completed two of those runs... Wolf start, one cycle, but with raiding. I never took note of how much you could make without raiding. One run was normal, and another with the settings

Code

"accessibilityLossWhenAllHostile":0.5, #was 1
"crewSalary":50, #was 10
"marineSalary":100, #was 20

In the first run, I took out Capteyns Orbital early, then some raider spaceports, cheesed it to the max, and it took me 10 months to reach 10 million credits. In the second, trading was very different from normal, in addition, fewer pirate/LP markets could be 'maxed out' since they never reached zero accessibility. So it took me two cycles to reach 10 million. (well, 8m credits and 2m worth of goodies)

I've been mulling over the results for a bit, without a clear conclusion. It was a clear nerf to trading, you could no longer double your credits until money became irrelevant. It made some things more interesting, some things seem more random. Most prices became flat across the board. You had to chase the few opportunities that turned up. Higher crew wages was something I had wanted to try out, and that was a clear improvement. Pirate fleets became larger, but there were fewer reasons to visit their bases.

 I don't know if it was better. It was different.

[Goumindong]

Most of the issues mentioned in this thread could be solved by adding basic features of commodities exchanges from real world examples.

So we should generally be wary in trying to simulate economies in depth. It very often doesn't work and it tends to be better to just simplify things.

Like. Supply and demand are things that exist but in the real world they're the sum of complicated functions which take into account more or less the totality of each individuals existence. You can estimate them but its not easy. And you can examine them within a constrained set. But trying to simulate an economy off of them is not something that is functionally worthwhile. My understanding is that the best systems we have are macro focused and more or less ignore supply and demand.

Its also the case that futures contracts wouldn't help here. The problem is that the price simulation (which uses a fine system, as it were) is producing consistent and predictable high prices. This is not inaccurate. And futures contracts doesn't help here because prices are high in war zones and anyone who is able to supply that war zone can war profiteer. Futures contracts for goods on chalcedon would be high.

A money cap could solve the issue. Planets would be bound by trade balances. But ignoring trade balances and keeping consistent prices makes the economy much easier to balance. Adding a money cap only when dealing with the player could work but also would make it harder for the player to actually fullfill surpluses. And can prevent legitimate trade and sales activity during normal times.

I am not terribly against it. But maybe its better to make fulfilling deficits actually fix the problems of the colony. If you take out a spaceport the spaceport is offline because they don't have supplies to fix it. If you bring them those supplies they should get it fixed really fast. Like, minimum "build new spaceport" time.

Maybe if there was a cap that only existed when the colony had been raided that might help (and then you could supply direct to the administrator in exchange for rep rather than money. But only if it wasn't you that caused the problem as otherwise that would be hella exploitable)

[smithney]

Is there anything inherently wrong with making ungodly bank by trading with rogue factions? The only thing that itches me personally is just the lack of repercussions for doing it consistently. If, for example, “solving” a shortage by dumping the demanded good for big buck on a respective black market (thus in fact supplying a demand, but not solving a shortage) made the stability of the target colony decrease, the player would have to start thinking just like a raider not to throw the cash cow into decivilisation.

Other than that, restricting oneself to trading makes the player miss out on exploration. This doesn’t punish the player as long as there is no competition for outer sector loot and colonies. If there was competition, however, exploration and bounty hunting would gain an edge in this regard...

[cytokine]

As for the original hypothesis of the thread, do we have an idea what the income should be if the player is focusing on credit increasing deficit trading activities?  Like if we're exploiting Pirate/LP trading to the max, but doing no raiding, no personally destabilizing worlds, just letting Pirate/Luddic Path colonies naturally do their thing...
Essentially, can we define what an excessive amount is in hard numbers, and what is not an excessive amount?

So I've been meaning to come back to you regarding this question, (just been a bit bored with trading recently).
Just how much can you make, per month, making only "cookie clicker trading", or "lame trades"?  So, what makes a trade 'lame' is obviously subjective in a singleplayer video game, but if I would set up a few criteria they would be:
A "lame" trade is constant, safe, and fast, fast meaning either profitable and space-compact, or short in distance.
Constant, meaning predictable, and existing without the player having to engage with the in-game world.

So to test, I did a 'lame trading challenge run' of how much profit could I make per month. So the setup was this: I worked up to 2 million credits, 8 Wolves, six Colossi, one Prometheus, with crew, starting in the Magec system. Basically having just enough capacity and armed deterrence for the purpose. (two more colossi would've been preferable). Player skills transverse jump and the one for capacity and +2 burn.

The general MO was as follows:
Buy supplies below 130 to capacity, fuel at 30 up to capacity, armaments below 550 up to 600 max, tools at 150 up to 600, drugs at 200, organs at 300.
Sell supplies over 180, fuel at 50, armaments at 800, tools at 300, drugs at 300, organs at 450.

I waited one month for prices to level out, then another month since Umbra had managed to max out by itself. Then I pretty much did a tour around the big supply and fuel producers, cashing in at raider places.
And every single time it seemed I would have a "bad month" of only making 500k, some place would crash and burn by itself -- I did no raiding or convoy hunting at all. This seems rather typical. And them maxing out prices would mean I could cash in for over two million (half being profit). And this happened every month I tried. It was either Umbra,  Chalcedon, Qaras, or Kanta, and that made the difference between making just 500k, or earning 1.5 million credits per month, which was the final average monthly profit. Them getting the "trade fleets lost"/"recent shipment lost" debuffs just kept tipping them over the edge. So 1.5m might be a rough estimate. But it might be 500k, if you're unlucky.


(https://imgur.com/jFrTIBR)

[Hiruma Kai]

Other than that, restricting oneself to trading makes the player miss out on exploration. This doesn’t punish the player as long as there is no competition for outer sector loot and colonies. If there was competition, however, exploration and bounty hunting would gain an edge in this regard...

Well, it does mean if you have any interest at all in the colonies and/or loot out there, means you're likely spending more time to reach the same end point, a giant pile of credits you can't spend meaningfully and a colonial empire.  Since you'll have built up a pile of credits trading, then going to explore the sector.  Or you could have just gone to explore the sector while making credits at a lower rate and still end up with credit printing colonies.

So to test, I did a 'lame trading challenge run' of how much profit could I make per month. So the setup was this: I worked up to 2 million credits, 8 Wolves, six Colossi, one Prometheus, with crew, starting in the Magec system. Basically having just enough capacity and armed deterrence for the purpose. (two more colossi would've been preferable). Player skills transverse jump and the one for capacity and +2 burn.

The general MO was as follows:
Buy supplies below 130 to capacity, fuel at 30 up to capacity, armaments below 550 up to 600 max, tools at 150 up to 600, drugs at 200, organs at 300.
Sell supplies over 180, fuel at 50, armaments at 800, tools at 300, drugs at 300, organs at 450.

I waited one month for prices to level out, then another month since Umbra had managed to max out by itself. Then I pretty much did a tour around the big supply and fuel producers, cashing in at raider places.
And every single time it seemed I would have a "bad month" of only making 500k, some place would crash and burn by itself -- I did no raiding or convoy hunting at all. This seems rather typical. And them maxing out prices would mean I could cash in for over two million (half being profit). And this happened every month I tried. It was either Umbra,  Chalcedon, Qaras, or Kanta, and that made the difference between making just 500k, or earning 1.5 million credits per month, which was the final average monthly profit. Them getting the "trade fleets lost"/"recent shipment lost" debuffs just kept tipping them over the edge. So 1.5m might be a rough estimate. But it might be 500k, if you're unlucky.


(https://imgur.com/jFrTIBR)

Thanks very much for the data, this is quite useful.  So your initial setup was a mid-game trade fleet, and given your cargo and fuel capacities, this is essentially about the best you could in the late game, or maybe 80% of the profit as you say you could have used another 2 Colossus haulers, again without manipulating raid status and so forth.  To be honest, 1.3-1.5 million per month at the high end doesn't sounds unreasonable to me for end game baseline trade profits given by end game you could be pulling in 500k from size 6 planets passively, and well over 1 million passively if you've got a fully alpha cored and itemed system of colonies.

Certainly dropping by a factor of 10 wouldn't be good.  Dropping or capping at a factor of 2 less would put you in the 250k to 750k region. 250k for late game sounds absolutely terrible per month given it requires action on the players part, and would likely kill a portion of exploration's profits as well.

As for a recovery mechanism after a fleet wipe late game in an iron man game, it also doesn't sound unreasonable to me.  That's something like purchasing a single capital or up to a restoring a capital per month, again after reaching something like 2 million in cash and a non-trivial ship investment.  So likely a 6 month recovery time or so in terms of just purchasing ships back, assuming no passive income.

[SCC]

It's worth noting trading, in comparison to bounty-hunting, won't have just higher income, but also lower costs, too. Maintenance, fuel use and salaries only go up and up.