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It is important to understand the difference between Inventory between Inventory (also known as items) and cargo  and cargo (usually referred to as wares). Cargo is in your ship, while inventory is on you. Inventory is listed in the SHIFT+I menu under player information. It moves with you when you go (or later teleport!) from ship to ship. Cargo is listed in ship storage and can be seen in the ship info menu (Shift+Enter for your current ship or INFO option in the map).

Trade and Combat ships have CONTAINER class storage, which covers all tradeable goods that are manufactured. Mining ships can have LIQUID or SOLID storage, which covers all materials that can be harvested from space. Trading with ship storage items happens with the TRADE menu when docking, while trading with inventory happens in-person with the trader found on a platform (look out for for the shop sign above the building).

Natural Resources

At the base of the Ware manufacturing chains are natural resources which have to be harvested and refined into useful products. Solar energy is converted directly into Energy Cells by Energy Cell Production modules while other Solid and Liquid resources need to be harvested by specialised Miner ships. Liquid resources are collected from flying in nebulae while solids require asteroids to be broken up and the fragments collected. The abundance of solar energy in a sector can be seen under the entry for the sector in the Galaxy category of the Encyclopaedia.

• Liquid Resources (from nebulae): Helium, Hydrogen and Methane (also known as gases)
• Solid Resources (from asteroids): Ice, Ore, Nividium and Silicon

Trading

Price Development

The production and exchange of wares is key to any healthy economy and the X-Universe is no different. Despite fierce competition from NPC traders there are always gaps in the market for the player to fill and line their pocket with credits in the process whether it is using a small courier or a huge manufacturing complex.

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There will be times when it is preferable for wares or consumables to be on a different player owned ship or station. This can be to free up cargo space for other purposes, stock up a reserve ship for exploration, meet mission requirements or to keep fleets supplied. To transfer wares between ships or stations requires one of the assets to have Cargo Drones before left clicking the asset with the ware to transfer in the Object List or Property Owned menu and then right click a target asset in Map and select the Transfer Wares With action to open a trade menu allowing wares to be transferred between the two ships up to their respective capacities for the ware.    

Auto Trading and Auto Mining

Player owned ships that have captains with enough skill stars can be set to automatically find profitable transactions or to mine resources and sell them at nearby NPC stations. The AutoTrade and AutoMine behaviours are set as the Default Behaviour under the Behaviour menu. As opposed to an order, a behaviour is a permanent assignment for a ship until revoked. For AutoTrade and AutoMine the player must specify a whitelist of wares to trade before adjusting the leash range for how far to look for stations to buy and sell at. The ships will then be fully automated allowing the player to divert attention to other tasks.

Mining

Introduction

Ships with Solid or Liquid storage types can harvest asteroids and nebulae, respectively. This generates resources (see belowabove), which can be sold to NPC stations as a source of income that requires no operating costs. Alternatively, it can be fed into player-owned stations to act as the basis for manufacturing chains.

Manual mining

For solids Resource Probes can be deployed at prospective mining sites to learn about the abundance of natural resources. In order to locate Solid natural resources, the player ship can use Scan Mode to help visually detect asteroids with resources of interest before shooting the asteroid or the marked surface spots with a mining laser, to release solid rocks which can be gathered using the Container Magnet. Liquids are unable to be manually mined at this time, which may change in the future.

Mining by Captains

With L ships Mining Drones are used to pick up the resource. All player . Nebulae are represented as blue tiles, asteroid fields as red tiles and mixed collection sites as purple tiles on the Map. After use, Deployables like Resource Probes can be deactivated through the HUD menu, and collected by flying over them.

Manual mining (Small and Medium ships)

These hulls collect natural resources on contact with the ship. Miners with Solid cargo storage need to equip a mining laser in order to break up asteroids into collectable peices. Afterwhich they can be collected by flying over them. Miners with Liquid cargo storage collect gases by passing directly through nebulae.

Manual mining (Large and Extra Large ships)

These hulls collect natural resources through the use of specialised mining drones. Similarly to the above, L/XL Solid miners use mining lasers mounted on turrets to break up asteroids. Once in range, mining turrets will automatically open fire on asteroids within line-of-site. At this time the player is unable to trigger the release of Mining Drones without handing back control of the ship to the Captain.

Ordering ships to mining

All player-owned mining ships can be ordered to mine using the Mine order the Mine order by right clicking a resource region on the map and selecting the Mine order before left clicking a resource to harvest from the list.

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They can then be order to sell their wares to stations. Player-owned miing ships that have captains with enough skill stars can be set to automatically mine resources and sell them at nearby NPC stations (see "auto-trading" section above).

Crystal mining

Some asteroids have surface spots that can be individually mined to release crystals for collection with the Container Magnet (hold the O key). The cystals can then be sold to Item Traders (see "Items versus Wares" section above). Depending on rarity, they can be quite valuable.

Auto Trading And Auto Mining

Player owned ships that have captains with enough skill stars can be set to automatically find profitable transactions or to mine resources and sell them at nearby NPC stations. The AutoTrade and AutoMine behaviours are set as the Default Behaviour under the Behaviour menu. As opposed to an order, a behaviour is a permanent assignment for a ship until revoked. For AutoTrade and AutoMine the player must specify a whitelist of wares to trade before adjusting the leash range for how far to look for stations to buy and sell at. The ships will then be fully automated allowing the player to divert attention to other tasks.

Natural Resources

At the base of the ware manufacturing chains are natural resources which have to be harvested and refined into useful products. Solar energy is converted directly into Energy Cells by Energy Cell Production modules while other Solid and Liquid resources need to be harvested by specialised Miner ships. Liquid resources are collected from flying in nebulae while solids require asteroids to be broken up and the fragments collected. The abundance of solar energy in a sector can be seen under the entry for the sector in the Galaxy category of the Encyclopaedia while the abundance of other resources requires a Resource Probe to be deployed at the mining site. Nebulae are represented as blue tiles, asteroid fields as red tiles and mixed collection sites as purple tiles on the Map.

• Liquid Resources: Helium, Hydrogen and Methane
• Solid Resources: Ice, Ore, Nividium and Silicon