[X3AP] Question about trade rank farming.

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Ailour
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[X3AP] Question about trade rank farming.

Post by Ailour » Thu, 13. Dec 12, 21:13

Hello! A couple of questions that i didn't find the answers exactly obvious:

(Background)
For my current game i've set a goal of reaching EXTREME trade while staying Harmless combat. So far, i'm at early Master Industrialist and going up *slowly*. 300M+ cr available.

1) Since farming the Trade rank is the main goal here, can someone elaborate on how it is accumulated? Since it's probably been discussed in the past, a link could be helpful. However, forum search isn't actually helping...

2) Off-topic: Since i try to keep 0 kills on anything not being an asteroid, is there a way to obtain the PHQ that way? Anyone here tried it? I made 4 war missions (without starting the plot), mostly taxi or materials fetching ones. Could this be enough? Time is not really considered here, just the possibility.

Oh, another thing: I happen to have some glitch on the mission accepted/completed count involving these war missions. Apparently, one of them didn't count as complete. Any fix (save for a previous save, which i don't have)?

Sovereign01
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Post by Sovereign01 » Thu, 13. Dec 12, 21:52

Best way to minimise combat rank is to (ab)use SETA, when leaving the game running unattended your combat rank drops. Best way that I found was the stock market exploit to gain trade rank, what you need is a TL full of Nvidium and some Ecells.

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JoeVN09
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Post by JoeVN09 » Thu, 13. Dec 12, 22:01

I might advise setting up a lot of Universe Traders, then camping out in your favourite Stock Exchange and trade shares with SETA. With the amount of capital you have, you should be able to make good trades hard and fast.
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Aragosnat
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Post by Aragosnat » Thu, 13. Dec 12, 22:02

Sovereign01 wrote:Best way to minimise combat rank is to (ab)use SETA, when leaving the game running unattended your combat rank drops. Best way that I found was the stock market exploit to gain trade rank, what you need is a TL full of Nvidium and some Ecells.
While I cannot say for certain for AP. But, if it is still like TC. When in TC your fight rank never increases from NPC ships your own NPC ships destroy. So the only thing I can say is if you're not playing a true DiD game is to save buy a ship and kill something weak with that ship, a fully kitted out M3 killing a non-civ TS / ship should do fine. :twisted:
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kurush
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Post by kurush » Thu, 13. Dec 12, 22:13

To get trade rank you need your ships to trade. An empire of UTs would work for this as well as several big complexes with commercial agents doing the trading. To avoid raising your kill count you can always buy yourself an M7M and may be a destroyer and order it to do the killing while hiding in its shadow on some M6 with good survivability. With PHQ the trickiest part would be when you either need to kill something yourself (v.s. asking your M7M to kill it) or when you have to capture a ship. This Xenon L capture might become a real problem, but might be doable if you are a good fighter pilot and can always disengage before destroying it and find another victim for your capture effort. I don't remember any plot steps where you need to kill something yourself and can't just spam it with missiles from your M7M to the oblivion.

Ailour
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Post by Ailour » Thu, 13. Dec 12, 22:39

First of all, a big thanks for the replies, this community really makes the difference :)

Just to clarify my questions:

- What actually counts most: the amount of goods traded (as in total credits) or the profit from the transaction? I suspect the later, but just want to make sure.

- About the PHQ plot, i was actually asking if there are certain conditions / missions that *require* pilot to make kills. The M7M missile spam is a nice tactic for taking care of threats, however i'm more interested in targets *required* to be killed by player to count. The L is indeed tricky, but i guess a special equipped M6 combined with a few reloads (to avoid the non-bailing ones) should do it. That, and some epic flying of course ;)

Or, i can just make it to my goal and then shred the whole Xenon fleet to pieces :)

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perkint
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Post by perkint » Fri, 14. Dec 12, 14:12

As I understand it, trade rank is based on number of trades at profit. I don't think (this is assumption) that amount of profit is taken into account. Percentage of sale price above purchase price rather than actual cash profit. Oh and I seem to remember someone suggesting selling below average does not gain you trade rep even if you make a profit...

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Rapier
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Post by Rapier » Sat, 15. Dec 12, 00:48

I did sit down with TC, a spreadsheet and the script editor one day and measured trade rank increase for a number of trades and missions. Bottom line is missions don't alter trade rank at all and buying/selling affect rank in relation to average price. That is, buying at 20 credits below average gets you twice as many trade points as buying at 10 credits below average and selling at 20 credits above average is better than at 10. There is a full thread on the investigation somewhere. I've no reason to believe things are any different in AP.

As for the effect of the stock exchange (which I haven't checked in the same way) I got some pretty big jumps in trade rank when selling for big profits.

Actively improving trade rank can only go on so long before it's more efficient to just hit SETA and let your trade empire up your rank.
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bizbag
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Post by bizbag » Sat, 15. Dec 12, 02:20

Rapier wrote:I did sit down with TC, a spreadsheet and the script editor one day and measured trade rank increase for a number of trades and missions. Bottom line is missions don't alter trade rank at all and buying/selling affect rank in relation to average price. That is, buying at 20 credits below average gets you twice as many trade points as buying at 10 credits below average and selling at 20 credits above average is better than at 10. There is a full thread on the investigation somewhere. I've no reason to believe things are any different in AP.

As for the effect of the stock exchange (which I haven't checked in the same way) I got some pretty big jumps in trade rank when selling for big profits.

Actively improving trade rank can only go on so long before it's more efficient to just hit SETA and let your trade empire up your rank.
So the "fastest", as it were, way to increase trade rank is to deal in high-volume, high-priced wares, such that you can buy and sell at empirically large price differences and in bulk.

I presume this means wares like Microchips *would* be good, except they tend to sell at average price at Trading Stations or only slightly up as secondary goods.

The best good would be one that's a primary ware. Ore and Silicon seem like obvious choices, but they're bulky.

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perkint
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Post by perkint » Sat, 15. Dec 12, 11:56

Not necessarily - Rapier's comments above don't specify if he means 20 is better than 10 when talking about the same goods or different goods.

Ie is it better to buy ecells at e lowest possible price or better to buy microchips at 30 below average which is only a fraction of how cheap they can be (but obviously a greater credit difference from average when compared with ecells at lowest).

Rapier - did your research cover that or can anyone else answer this?

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dillpickle
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Post by dillpickle » Sat, 15. Dec 12, 13:02

There was this Thread a while back, from what I remember you gain 1 point for every 800 credits profit, worked from average price so buying 200 ecells at minimum (12) would get you 1 point, whereas only 3 units of silicon at bought at minimum would get you the point.

Buying/Selling to your own factories doesn't effect trade rank.

Closed loop not particularly good f trade rank.

I tend to set up mini-plexes of individual wares or those that share the same resources, set everything at average price, and let CAG's Buy/Sell for best price traders do the work, they'll only buy from/sell to my own stations if they can't find a better deal, everything else is bought/sold to NPC at profit = trade rank increase.

Lord Kellmar
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Post by Lord Kellmar » Sat, 15. Dec 12, 14:39

I have the same goal that the OP's (I'm at 36% pan galactic tyccon, the end is near :D ), and the rule of thumb for trade rank is :
"Buy bellow average price, sell above"
The furthest from the average price you buy/sell, the more trade point you gain. That means that you won't gain very much by selling end products (weapons, shields) at equipements docks

In my game (TC, Humble merchand start), I assured a good credit flow with :
- About 80 LT/UT ;
- Lots of building missions to create more opportunities ;
- Secondary products suppling complexes with CAGs to assure the best deal ;
- And my best creation : 3 Yaki sectors for my own pleasure (something like this : http://uppix.net/d/d/0/edea151e8d5bcb5a ... f61ba3.png )

(My game is slighty modded, but not in a way that affect trading)

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Edith bis : no SETA abuse for me
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