Items

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Versus Wares

It is important to understand the difference between Inventory (also known as items) 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).

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Ware prices vary a lot depending on the quantity of the ware the station has in its reserves. For reference menus often show the average price of a ware to give a trader an idea of how good a price is. 

Gaining

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Info About Trade Offers

Trade Offers describe what wares a station, or it's Build Storage Module currently wish to buy or sell. Once Trade Offers are known for a station, they will begin to become out of date over time if whatever granted knowledge of them stops occurring. If the playership has Trade Computer Extension software, it postpones the time before knowledge of Trade Offers begins to deteriorate.

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Items are often found in space as loot (dropped by other ships), or in lockboxes and other storages. Some items can be useful in crafting special upgrades or useful items like the EMP bombs used in a spacesuit. Most however can be sold at a good profit. When on station platforms the player can interact with traders and ask for them to "Show me your wares" opening the trade menu for wares from the personal inventory. Use the sliders to buy or sell items and then click the Confirm button to complete the transaction.

How to Buy and Sell Wares - Ship

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Trading

When in the pilot seat of the player ship the Ship Interactions menu will have the Trade option in the middle allowing the ship to trade with the station currently docked at. The trade menu works similar to the item trader menus, except the ship and station will trade wares from their storage with the type of wares able to be exchanged being limited by the storage type. Other player assets can be told to remotely trade by left clicking them in the Object List or Property Owned menu and then right clicking a target station and selecting Trade With to either trade with the station or its Build Storage (only present on expanding stations). Alternatively after selecting a player owned ship the wares shown by the filter can be right clicked to open a trade menu to order the ship to buy/sell the wares for the best price within the viewed area of space. Wares on stations will be automatically sold to interested NPC traders by the manager or by player owned ships assigned to act as a subordinate for the station.

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• Used to break up asteroids into small, collectable mineral fragments (Sold cargo)
• Turret Settings are explained on the Combat And Weapons page
• Once in range, Mining Turrets automatically open fire on asteroids within line-of-site

Mining ships Piloted

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By Captains

Small and Medium Mining Ships:

• These ships collect gases or minerals like other items and wares in space (on contact with the ship)

Large Mining

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Ships:

• These hulls collect gases or minerals through the use of specialised drones

Ordering

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Ships To Mine

All player-owned mining ships can be ordered to mine using 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. They can then be order to sell their wares to stations. Player-owned mining 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 and Auto Mining" section above).

Manual

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Asteroid Mining For Solid Resources

Mineral mining with Small and Medium ships:

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• Some asteroids have surface spots that can be individually mined away to release various types of crystals.
•  Depending on rarity, crystals can be quite valuable when sold to Item Traders (see "Items versus Wares" section above).
• As with mineral fragments, the Container Magnet can speed up collection.

Manual

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Nebula Mining For Liquid Resources

At this time, it is currently not possible to collect resources from nebulae while the player pilots the ship.