Introduction
Stations require a variety of different resource wares in order to produce new wares, and this is potentially lucrative activity for the player to get involved in. Wares come in two basic varieties; harvestable resources and manufactured goods. Ultimately, they feed into the production of ~100 ships, ~50 stations, weapon turrets, drones and missiles. Generally speaking, a player will acquire harvestable resources via mining, although there are also a few unique stations dotted around the galaxy offering some (spoiler at the bottom of here).
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 via owned ships
I'd prefer to leave this until v4 becomes live, but ATM (other than the obvious buy low, sell high - & get your trades in first), small-talking multiple NPCs to gain stackable discounts can work effectively, if a little tediously.
Each successful trade improve reputation with station owner faction. Gained reputation proportional to transaction value. You need to trade goods with cumulative worth about 6 000 000 000 Cr to gain 30 relation with faction.
Manual trading (and mining) overlaps with the related 'ware shortage' missions. They are a bit bugged and the source of on-going investigation by Devs but in the meantime, the guide here can help.
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
Black market traders are not available to view in the general Menu <Enter-5>, but still can be found in the Dock NPC list (if selected) when you open the Details screen; therefore you can sell illegal wares while out of reach of police ships, remotely.
All trader prices and inventories are randomised, so if you see 2 traders of the same type, they may have different prices. Sometimes you can buy from one and sell to another for profit without leaving the platform or station.
Every remote trade adds a 2500 Cr transport fee. <Check whether this is per item type or per total transaction. Does it apply in the same way to remote capship crew hire? - Snafu>
High reputation with the trader's Faction will give a discount on items (capship or personal trading). A limited time discount for the individual trader or their station can also be achieved as Smalltalk reward (discount variable on how far & successfully you succeed with the smalltalk minigame)
As of v4b the 'hidden wares' for crafting now seem personalised to their regions, so you are far more likely to find diamonds or gems in DV stations, while OL is more likely to provide spaceflly-related wares.There is a small chance of finding anything, but it's not worth the effort of searching if you're after a specific item
Note that you will /never/ get products for crafting rare equipment: you won't gain <Authentic> Eggs or <Rare> JD components from tunnel-diving no matter how much you search!