Controlling station trade

Introduction

The Manager has a menu accessible though the "Restrict trade to other factions" option of their Detail page. It allows controlling whether the station will let other factions trade with it and whether it's assigned ships may trade with other factions. The various permutations are described below. There are no global settings or settings for each individual ships. Therefore they need setting up for each station but the default settings are no restrictions on trade with NPC factions.

Intra-zone trade can take place via mass traffic with cargolifters equipped to stations and in this respect, cargolifters operate like ships assigned to stations. A further nuance to the options outlined below is consider manually fixing a ware's price to something unreasonable (minimum for inputs, maximum for outputs). This allows for a low chance of trading where the deals are only very profitable (e.g. for tricking some money into the system that is otherwise isolated from NPCs in some way).

Trading with NPC faction ships and stations (no restrictions)

Trading with NPC faction stations only

Trading with NPC faction ships only

• Do not assign ships to the Manager
• Avoid building the station in a zone with NPC stations your Manager could use Cargolifter drones to trade with via the Mass Traffic Network.