[X3:AP] Trading Halp Please - holes in resource chain everywhere

[Motorsheep]

Hey everyone - I'm fairly new to X, AP is my first game in the series. I've played some 10, 12 hours now, and all I'm really interested in for now is the trading and economy aspect of it.
I currently have 2 Mercury haulers trading in Argon space for me, and I'm familiar with the concept of TSE, Best Buy/Sell, and I'm using Navigation Satellites to monitor prices.

I've used my discoverer to uncover all argon and some boron and teladi space.

Now, after a few good runs that allowed me to equip a second Mercury, I've kind of hit a wall:

The common trade goods, i.e. ore and energy seem to be oversaturated with competition - everywhere I send my ships to sell, they report that someone else was faster. The Power Circle, Hole and Wall systems all have several solar plants, and prices in most of those are unacceptable. All the while Cloud Base SW is in desperate need for energy and the Ore Belt only has a single Solar Plant. Not to mention the fact that trading across multiple jumps for 6, 7 credits per freight unit is hardly worth it.

Ore has the opposite problem - most factories that are within 2-3 sectors don't need it anymore.


And with the other goods I have the following problem:

Every single factory is selling their product at a price higher than any buyer is willing to pay, because they're missing one or more resources, or because demand is so high.

There is only a single crystal fab in all of Argon space, and it's selling its crystals at 200-300 credits above the asking price at any solar plant.

Cahoona's are expensive because of a lack of spices. Spices are hardly available anywhere.
Meat is expensive because of a lack of both secondary resources (I forget which).

It goes on and on like this. I've been chasing my tail looking for a product/resource that I can buy and sell without having to find a secondary resource first.

What do you suggest?
I've only got some 200k credits in my pocket, so trading stuff at a loss to get the chain going doesn't seem like such a great idea.


Thanks for your help!

[Graaf]

Welcome to the X-Universe.

As for the holes in the production chain, Secondary Resources are not needed for factories to start producing their products.

If you have saturated the local area, then I suggest that you venture outward. Send one Mercury North to trade with the Teladi, and the other one South at CBSW to trade with the Paranids.

The common trade goods, i.e. ore and energy seem to be oversaturated with competition - everywhere I send my ships to sell, they report that someone else was faster. The Power Circle, Hole and Wall systems all have several solar plants, and prices in most of those are unacceptable. All the while Cloud Base SW is in desperate need for energy and the Ore Belt only has a single Solar Plant. Not to mention the fact that trading across multiple jumps for 6, 7 credits per freight unit is hardly worth it.

To be honest 6 or 7 credits/unit on an Energy shipment is well worth it. The best offer you can get is 8 and that is only available from a newly build factory.

Go forth and profit.

[ancienthighway]

Secondary resources are not used in production. They are consumed at a predetermined rate that no one can definitively identify.

For the type of trading you're doing, NPC station to NPC station, speed is most important. The Argon Mercury/Mercury Tanker is the best Argon ship your trading operations at this time. As you expand your knowledge of the universe and improve your reputation with the other races, the Paranid Demeter, and Split Caiman are also good choices. These three ships have speeds of 100m/s or better. Keep this in mind for future acquisitions.

That being said, the Mercury Hauler is one of my favorite transports, even when the cargo hold isn't expanded. It's an excellent mineral transport able to almost completely fill an NPC station that needs minerals in one trip. If you have jump drives already, you are in great shape for moving forward. If not, you'll want to make that your next upgrade when you can afford them.

Now, on to suggestions to get your trading empire going...
Weapons, shields, missiles, and high tech wares all need a minimum of three types of wares, minerals, food, and energy. The space around Argon Prime has a few sectors that are heavily populated with these types of stations; your consumers. Resource production also seems to be clustered around an area of sectors; your suppliers. In addition to what you've discovered so far, one other sector is important for you, the Paranid sector Emperor's Mines. It has an abundant supply of minerals.

Start setting up Navigation Satellites/Advance Satellites in your targeted consumer sectors and once those are finished, the key supplier sectors. This way you can see prices before putting your traders into motion. Navsats are cheaper, but Advsats see more. With a ware onboard, you can identify the best selling point for each of the consumer stations, then decide where to send it. If you keep at least one of the required wares on your traders, you can do a best sell to find out what's needed before filling your hold up with wares not in demand. (I try to do this but consistently fail .)

Remember, if nothing else, you can buy and sell food at the trading stations at the average price. Buy less than average price and you always have a fallback buyer.

As you get more money and more transports, you can start looking at automated trading techniques. Timsup2nothing has a number of threads on this subject that may be worth looking at now for future implementation.

[Annette Barret]

Secondary resources are not used in production. They are consumed at a predetermined rate that no one can definitively identify.

For the type of trading you're doing, NPC station to NPC station, speed is most important. The Argon Mercury/Mercury Tanker is the best Argon ship your trading operations at this time. As you expand your knowledge of the universe and improve your reputation with the other races, the Paranid Demeter, and Split Caiman are also good choices. These three ships have speeds of 100m/s or better. Keep this in mind for future acquisitions.

That being said, the Mercury Hauler is one of my favorite transports, even when the cargo hold isn't expanded. It's an excellent mineral transport able to almost completely fill an NPC station that needs minerals in one trip. If you have jump drives already, you are in great shape for moving forward. If not, you'll want to make that your next upgrade when you can afford them.

Now, on to suggestions to get your trading empire going...
Weapons, shields, missiles, and high tech wares all need a minimum of three types of wares, minerals, food, and energy. The space around Argon Prime has a few sectors that are heavily populated with these types of stations; your consumers. Resource production also seems to be clustered around an area of sectors; your suppliers. In addition to what you've discovered so far, one other sector is important for you, the Paranid sector Emperor's Mines. It has an abundant supply of minerals.

Start setting up Navigation Satellites/Advance Satellites in your targeted consumer sectors and once those are finished, the key supplier sectors. This way you can see prices before putting your traders into motion. Navsats are cheaper, but Advsats see more. With a ware onboard, you can identify the best selling point for each of the consumer stations, then decide where to send it. If you keep at least one of the required wares on your traders, you can do a best sell to find out what's needed before filling your hold up with wares not in demand. (I try to do this but consistently fail .)

Remember, if nothing else, you can buy and sell food at the trading stations at the average price. Buy less than average price and you always have a fallback buyer.

As you get more money and more transports, you can start looking at automated trading techniques. Timsup2nothing has a number of threads on this subject that may be worth looking at now for future implementation.

Whilst I agree with what you are saying, a string of secondary resource sales can make a nice profit. (Rule 782 Teladin profit guild.)

[ancienthighway]

I don't deny that for a moment. As my resources expand, I like to set up a complex in the AP area that makes and distributes these secondary resources.

[fireanddream]

You're overthinking this, take a look at an interactive X3AP map and have a "feel" of where stuff are. In a nut shell:
sell ecells to food/bio fac
sell ecells & food to higher level fac
sell final products to equipment dock/trading station

Look at the five sectors east of hatikvah's faith, we have an outrageous number of SPP, an outrageous number of "high level" stations, but only one L and two M cahoona bakery in light of heart and only two M cattle ranch in montalaar. Have an idea already?

Of course, and other stuff like minerals, silicon, etc, but I suggest you stay away from those 'cause they take up too much cargobay. You don't need to catch every trade opportunity, there's only so much we can do MANUALLY. A good number of UTs (>20 maybe) can cover 80% of the trading opportunities NPC stations present, and it's absolutely care-free. if that's not enough for you go learn CLS.

[Motorsheep]

Thanks for the replies everybody!

Remembering Eve online, I thought I'd have to move up to more expensive and more profitable trading goods as quickly as possible - as opposed to sticking with a more real-life-like constant, low-margin trade.

Compared to hours of playtime, it seemed that I was creeping along at a snail's pace, (I made maybe 100k in a 2h session last night) but maybe the game is just slow like that at times in the beginning.

I'll look into the mentioned five sectors east of Hatikvah's faith, and I've also discovered the Emperor's Mines in the meantime, but currently I have more than enough sources of ore.

And I hope the Mk3 Trade software is worth the 500k it costs o.O

As to CLS - I did employ 3rd party databases, excel sheets and the likes for my trading and producing in EvE, but I'm not sure I'll dive this deep into a single player game.. Whom would I show off to?



Edit:

I also realize I have by far not discovered all of Argon space. I thought it was just going to be the bit in the West...


Edit 2:

Slowly getting the hang of this. I've bought a third Mercury, was left with 60k after equipping it and am now back to 300k in no time at all.

[fireanddream]

No man, CLS is the foundation of any trading (except maybe UTs) in X3, I can't imagine living one day without CLS internal or CAG, they are community-made scripts to SIMPLIFY trading, and everything is automatic, set up and forget. But yea, you can't focus on the expensive goodies in X3 'cause those are often the "end product", like capital weapons which nobody except you will buy.

[Lea Flamma]

If you want to play the game as trader, which is what I always do, you have to love CLS, CAG, ST and UT. All of them have a job in your trading empire, so read about them, at least the first two.

As for the Sector and Universal Traders. They are both the same, with the later having no limits in their range, which might not always be a good thing. They buy using your account, so try not to drop as low as 60k, as it will cripple their efforts by a lot, to the point they might fly a course with a 16 E-Cells delivery. For UTs I tend to try never to fall below 1M, which might seem like a lot early in the game.

CAGs are the guys that keep your complexes runing. They deal with supplies and if necessary the sales as well. If you ever decide to build stations, you will come to love those guys.

CLS has so many applications it's hard to describe in a short note. They are used as traders, suppliers for your bases, NPC bases, entire fleets, ware shifters for mining fleets and what else. In a shirt note, they are Waypoint based, with each waypoint being a pickup, delivery, buy, sell, refuel and some more. When used in a creative way, they are one of the most powerful trading tools in the game.



I am a TC player, but afaik the games are not so diferent in terms of trading, so here is my personal advice. Don't be afraid to go modiffied. The game in itself is wonderful, but the more I expanded my little Trading Empire, the more I felt I miss something... And I found all I needed in the mods section. But don't take it too seriously, the game is to be enjoyed the way you like it, so do what makes you tick.

As for those resource issues, that's the game providing you opportunities for station expansion. If you see a specific resource missing from a sector and a few surrounding it, provide it with your own factory. It's an easy way to grab some income.

Edit:
Forgot to add. CAG and CLS share the pilot levels with each other. But if you start the ST/UT command on a ship with a CAG/CLS pilot in it, a new will be hired with 0 experience and vice versa.

[AleksMain]

No man, CLS is the foundation of any trading (except maybe UTs) in X3, I can't imagine living one day without CLS internal or CAG, they are community-made scripts to SIMPLIFY trading, and everything is automatic, set up and forget. But yea, you can't focus on the expensive goodies in X3 'cause those are often the "end product", like capital weapons which nobody except you will buy.

It is not true.


Best profit is from high level products.

There is no need to do modification in game to have profit.


Main strategy:

1. Use barter system, when you start game, i.e.:
You have 1 item in sector without it and you barter it for goods worth dozen times more.
2. Buy any battle damaged ship (less than 85% hull strength), repair it and sell.
You can buy M3 for 400k and sell for 1200k, for example.

3. You can set few sector traders (no need to set more)
There are few really profitable sectors for ST

4. Any Universal Trader is potential target for enemy.
Calculate risk to loose ship worth few millions after few days of trade in comparison with profit during few days.

5. Build SSC(Self Sufficient Complexes) in sectors, where you will not fight with enemies, without pirates, with 2 Jump or even 1 Jump Gate only, with asteroids 25+ yield (Silicon and Ore for high level products)

6. Sell produced weapons at any HQ (any amount for average price)

7. Result: profit.

Example: If you have SSC in Antigone Memorial with 6 PPC and missile factories , then you can sell 1 PPC for 984k every hour and equip your M7M with missiles for free.

[fireanddream]

I thought OP was not interested in making him/herself a supplier, in that case he/she would attempt to build factories instead of sticking with buy&sell trade runs.

Bartering: ain't nobody got time to bring you 2000 ore for your 8000 ecells, cmon bruh, seriously.
Second hand ships: in TC I had somebody offering me a heavy hydra, ONCE, in AP they stuck with fighters and TS/TP, I can probably earn 200k-1m for each good deal but what is this, money for ants?

You won't lose any UTs as I didn't in 7 in-game days, they probably got attacked about twice throughout this whole period of time. The mk3 blacklist manager helped.

[Lea Flamma]

The OP was asking for trading tips. Trading as in buying and selling. Self sustainable complexes are a waste of serious credits. In terms of pure numbers it's much better to stack the same factories together and deliver the required goods. Every step you ommit in a self sustainable complex is a loss in possible profit. It requires less initial setup, but will also net less creds per hour.

[ancienthighway]

Example: If you have SSC in Antigone Memorial with 6 PPC and missile factories , then you can sell 1 PPC for 984k every hour and equip your M7M with missiles for free.

Just throwing something into Xadrian, it would cost almost 93 million credits to produce 1 PPC an hour (that's 3 PPC forges, not 6). You would have to produce 100 PPCs just to pay for the closed loop complex.

Producing high value weapons is not the get rich quick method you claim it to be.

[AleksMain]

Example: If you have SSC in Antigone Memorial with 6 PPC and missile factories , then you can sell 1 PPC for 984k every hour and equip your M7M with missiles for free.

Just throwing something into Xadrian, it would cost almost 93 million credits to produce 1 PPC an hour (that's 3 PPC forges, not 6). You would have to produce 100 PPCs just to pay for the closed loop complex.

Producing high value weapons is not the get rich quick method you claim it to be.

Here is screenshot
http://i.imgur.com/cKZ5NXB.png
of such complex. There are not 6, not 3, but 5 PPC forges.

Since my character has Trade rank Economist and battle rank Battle master, then he has more than enough money for such complexes.

One of the tips for "get rich quick method":

In mission to return abandoned ship sometimes you can return ship to shipyard and sell it. If you sell M7 ship you can get 20 - 30 millions per one mission.


{Images posted directly to the forums should not be greater than 640x480 or 100kb, oversize image now linked - Terre}

[ancienthighway]

You make your big, fast money in other ways than building complexes to sell weapons, shields, and missiles for average price. Those complexes to produce a steady known income and are useful, once you have the money for them.

In the case of the OP, he is in the very early stages of the game. When he posted, he had around 200 credits. Any sort of station building was out of the question. Trading, both MORT and when sufficient capital is available automated trading with CLS2 ships provides a somewhat steady income in the early game. Missions, trade and fight, are all low paying at first, but as those ranks increase, and as race rep increases, the big paying missions to make the big, fast come.

A great complex for early game and ROI is one containing 2 large wheat farms. I like to place it in Herron's Nebula. A CAG or two to supply energy, let the NPCs come, and eventually the CAG can sell wheat, too. With all the SPPs in the area, e-cells are cheap. 25 production cycles pay off the investment. It's keeping pace, actually slightly outperforming, a 2 1mj shield complex, which sells surplus ore, I have. Wheat complex - 2 mil credit to build; Shield complex - 7 mil to build.

[Lea Flamma]

For early stage money... I woukd say spy the market as each game start is diferent. See what's not provided in big enough quantities and set of to provide it. Food is the easiest to provide, as the factories are rather cheap.

As of trading, I would suggest going for minerals. Find a sector with a lot of weapon factories and one with mines, buy low sell high. Check prices before you buy on each station, check prices at the buyers after the purchase and then when you get into the sector. Important is also to pay attention to the local traders, if you see a lot of TS ships marked as 'Mineral Traders' or something like that, find a diferent good to supply.

But most importantly, buy a jumpdrive. It's bread and butter of movement, yet a slightly big investment early on.

[fireanddream]

I'd say THE best way to make "your first barrel of gold" early game is probably return abandoned ship missions (oh yea I accidentally wiped out the signature on my cobra, I'll tell its exact coordinate to a complete stranger and ask him to bring it back for 200k reward, nothing is gonna go wrong), since you can keep exploring the universe while doing missions to raise your rep, which is something you usually gotta do anyway.

But I'm sure OP is only interested to make money legitimately aka from trading.

[Lukesharp]

Got to love abandoned ship missions. Some donkey just offered me less than 200k to return his M7M. Seriously, did he really think I was going to return it for that?

[Lea Flamma]

Again... As the title says, Trading Help. It's not Easy Creds, or Fast Income. He asked for trading

[Motorsheep]

No, no, it's cool, guys. I'm open to all suggestions.
Currently I'm running 3 Mercuries, just equipped the first one with the Mk3 trade software and another one with a jump drive. Credits are coming in faster and faster.

I guess I'll keep moving the other two around manually until I've made the money to make them all autonomous and take over my current nine-to-five in trading for some time while I get myself a buster or something and start doing some missions (occasionally I do like to blow some shit up).


Thanks for all your replies - some of the info is obviously related to a stage I haven't reached yet, but it's all gonna come in handy once I get there.