Introduction
Stations make use of a variety of different wares as ingredients for producing new wares, and moving them all around is a potentially lucrative activity. Wares come in two basic varieties; harvestable resources and manufactured wares. The latter being make up of combinations of the harvested resources and/or simpler manufactured wares. Ultimately, wares feed into the production of ~100 ships, ~50 stations, weapon turrets, drones and missiles.
There are approximately 6 tiers of wares, with each generally made from the preceding tier:
- Harvestable wares and Energy Cells*.
- Food-related wares and water, used in combination to make Food Rations* or Bofu*.
- Refined materials predominantly made from havestable resources (e.g. Cut Crystals and Ion Cells).
- Advanced items, such as Quantum Tubes and Chemical Compounds.
- Ship Components, such as Fusion Reactors and Reinforced Metal Plating.
- Ships, stations, surface elements, drones and missiles**.
* Used in every subsequent tier above the tier in question.
** Using varying combinations of Tier 4 and 5 wares.
Generally speaking, a player will acquire harvestable resources via mining, although there are also a few unique stations dotted around the galaxy offering some of the harvestable resources (spoiler at the bottom of here). Other items may be manufactured by the player or NPC stations.
The prices we need to pay for any given ware may be modified by a range of possible discounts:
- Supply and demand (modifies price by how much a station has/needs relative to storage capacity).
- Faction discounts (the more a faction likes you, the less their wares cost to buy).
- Discounts gained from NPC on a station (rewarded by successful smalltalk; stackable across multiple NPCs).
- Discounts gained while flying around stations occasionally.
Whatever type of trading the player may get involved in, there a couple of core mechanics that provide helpful information:
- Baseline: We have to fly near trade ports (multiple per station) to learn about trades (time-limited and lost on zone change).
- Baseline: Scanning info points on station modules unlocks info, such as storage level and production times.
- A Trade Computer unlocks all trade info for a station when we are nearby, and prevents loss of info on zone change.
- Trade Agents provide real-time info on all the offers available at their station, stopping the time limit mentioned above.
- Trade Agents unlock all storage modules at their station (new in v4.00), which helps identify supply bottlenecks.
- Economy Analytics Software (new in v4.00) provides graph-based stats for stations or an entire zone/sector/system/galaxy.
Automated Station trading (via Manager)
Once a station is built or upgraded, it's production lines can work straight away if you manually supply materials but for it to really work for you, it needs a Manager. The Manger will begin to advertise Buy and Sell orders for wares using a budget that you can define the size of within the Manger's Detail Menu. Those trade deals may be fulfilled by NPC traders, your manual traders (see below) or civilian ships that you assign to the Manager (recommended to reduce the probability of the station becoming stuck due to missing wares). See here for further details about how
Production Modules will often need multiple types of cargo (Bulk, Container, Energy and/or Liquid). Although the station will generate Upkeep Missions for missing ship types, as your stations grow you may need to invest in multiple ships covering the same type(s). Civilian ships come in Trade and Mine varieties, although the distinction is a little soft since both types can do fulfil both rolls with what they chose to do for a station being largely driven by whether they carry mining drones or not. See here for further details on Manager-controlled ships and about how to control where your ships will operate.
Useful info from elsewhere on the web:
- There's an interesting thread here about how trades are currently (v3.61/v4.00b) worked out, & why your station may stop trading for a time, with Dev comments/clarifications.
Manual trading with ships (via Trade menus)
Manual trading involves the player sending their Trade or Mine ships to to collect a ware and sell it somewhere else. Ideally for a profit, but maybe you'd like to pay over-the-odds sometimes, such as when looking around for wares needed for construction. The collection of wares could entail the mining of harvestable resources, as mentioned above, or more-commonly picking up wares produced by a station.
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As of Rebirth 4.00, two menus are available for trading:
Trade Offer menu (shift+T)
- A multi-purpose menu offering a variety of ways to find particular offers.
- Presents all known offers (your property; NPC property you've visited recently, or with Trade Agents on).
- Able to view all sale offers, or all purchase offers.
- A broad-ranging text filter allows you to focus on, for example, object names, zones or wares.
- Available directly, or via a station or CV's Detail Menu (in order to quickly see offers just for that station/CV).
- Possible trades can be ordered in various ways, such as by 'price per unit as % difference from mean price per unit'.
Trade Deals menu (shift+Y)
- The Rebirth v4.00 counterpart to the Trade Offers menu, which , introduced in Rebirth v4.00, streamlines regular trading.
- Only presents deals (where player knows a matched sale and purchase).
- Incorporates a cargo hold filter, like blackmilan's mod, that restricts presented deals to those the selected ship can carry.
- Possible deals can be ordered by distance, investment or profit.
- For deals involving wares on player-owned stations, the sale price is displayed in the Profit column.
- When ordering the menu by Profit, an estimate for player-owned wares is used (probably sale price vs average price).
Useful info from elsewhere on the web:
- NPC ships and Trade Reservation have been explanation by Burnit! (link; Oct 01, 2015).
- Station Match Finder, for matching ware production and needs by EuRoKa (link; Nov 10, 2014).
- Station building guide by Simoom (link; Feb 18, 2014).
Personal trading via Skunk
As above, but there may be a few traders on the station that have different prices for their wares; worth checking if you want to buy a bunch of green marines or sell off your illegal wares from a distance! There is no transport fee for /selling/ but there is one for /buying/ - see below
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