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).
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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!