A Guide to Trading

[Mickk]

Mickk's Basic Guide to Trading. {job done, this is a BASIC guide after all}

This is going to be a simple, generic guide to trading, so don't expect much.

The plan is to focus on Trading, so I'm not going to tell people to go and mine the Helium Cloud to make a few quick credits.... unless you want to use it as a 'no credit layout' first cargo.
Hopefully, by the time I'm done here, you, the player will have a basic knowledge of how to trade, have a reasonably well set up ship and have a reasonably large 'list' of things to trade.
For this guide I am going to assume the player is starting in Liberty space and has a knowledge of the maps controls at the very least.

First things first.

Naming your ship.

New players will make one major mistake when making a Trader.
They will name it something that makes it painfully obvious that the ship is a trade vessel, which will make Pirates rub their hands with glee when they see the name.

Avoid calling it anything that has 'Trader' in the name -or- that has a capital T at the end of it.

Yes, people actually do that and then either have to start over after finding they are a Pirate Magnet or pay $2 Million credits for a name change, which is a big chunk of credits when you are starting out.

Starting out.

So, here you are, with your new, rather ordinary ship.
Don't worry, the ship you have is fine and you will soon have a bigger one.
The ship you have will have a tiny cargo bay, but right now we don't need to worry too much about that.

What to do now?

Be prepared to spend a reasonable amount of time doing this, as it will give you many more places and items to trade and that is vital for a Trader.

Open your MAP, we are going to explore a bit. Now, open the UNIVERSE map. You will see a number of large, bright 'stars'. Most of these will belong to different 'Houses'.

Note that you are somewhere around the middle pf the universe map. In order to reach the corners of the universe, it can take up to 30 minutes of traveling just to reach one area and those are the places that have proper Trade lanes and Jump Gates all the way, however most of those places are right on the outer edge of 'known space'.

Pick a point on the universe map and left click on one of the bright stars and pick 'Zoom in'. One you have done that, left click anywhere in that screen, about halfway between the main Star and the edge of the map and pick 'Set best path'.

This is the start of your adventures as a trader. Now set out along this route and dock at every place you come to that you can. Of course, some places are going to be RED to you, so don't go there, unless you want to die.

If you see a planet and it has Trade lanes going to it, there is a good chance you can dock there, so go to it, detours from your route at this point are a *good* thing, as it adds to your list of Bases and items to trade.

Eventually you will get close to your destination and find that it is in the middle of space somewhere, usually in the middle of an asteroid/debri field. Don't worry about it, look around and there is a pretty good chance that there will be a planet/station nearby.

If at all possible you *really* want to go to the planet, docking at everything along the way.
By the time you have done this, you will now have a list of Bases/Planets you have been to and when you actually go to buy something, if you click on the item before buying it there should be a list of places you can sell that item at, with the place you will get the most credits for it at the top of that list.

The Next Step.

So, hopefully you have repeated the above exploring task a few times and now have a large list of places you have been.

It is time to start trading.

Go to the 'Commodity Trader' and look at what you can buy.

Click on an item and then look at the bottom of the screen, where there will be a description of the item and, because you have been exploring, a list of places you can sell that item at for a profit.

Go down the list of items, checking the amount you can sell it for and pick the one that you think will get you the most credits when you sell it.
Remember that some items take up more space than others and this will affect your final profit margin.

Getting your next ship.

So, you have been trading for a while and have a nice little pile of credits built up.

Time to think about getting another, bigger ship.

There are a large number of cargo carrying vessels in this game, ranging from the tiny to the large.

Most planets have a 'Ship Dealer' where you can buy various ships and they almost always have some sort of trade vessel.

The only thing to say here really, is buy what you can afford. Do not worry too much about not having enough money for a full load of cargo afterward, just buy what you can, there will always be an asteroid/debri field along the way where you can pick up random stuff (water/scrap etc) for free to fill your hold.

How to deal with....

Pirates!

The scourge of every Trader out there is the Pirate.

How to deal with Pirates has been very hotly debated ever since the first one showed up sometime in the distant past.

Now, going off topic a little here, but if you are on Discovery, you know that this is a Role Playing server and as such there are rules that *must* be followed in order that all players can have a "good time".

One of these is that you *must* RP a little before engaging a target, the Pirates target being you and your money or cargo.

All I can suggest here is that you go with the flow.

Some Pirates are happy to get a some credits or maybe enough cargo to fill their hold along with some RP, good or bad.

Others are, well, greedy and/or downright nasty and will ask for more credit than you have or demand that you drop your cargo.
What you do at this point is up to you.

Of course there are Pirates that RP for odd stuff, like sometimes they want a donation for their retirement fund or a sick mother or maybe they just *really* need a clean pair of underwear and will be content to let you go after you have 'sent' them over.
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Well there you have it, if I was starting over and making a Trader, this is how *I* would do it.

If you think I have missed anything, feel free to add it in a following post.

Yes, I did not put in anything about "Jump Holes" and Smuggling, to my thinking these are 'advanced' topics for experienced Traders, who will probably have figured those out by the time they get to that point anyway.

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Mickk: One orginal, 4 clones. Telp..teleh....mind comu...comi..come...talking ability.
A possibly very ordinary signature coming soon.
Lost your FL ID? Have NOT reinstalled your OS? Click here!

[Jeffery_Peters]

Thanks a lot for that piracy part!

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A crappy new year yeah!
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[E X O D I T E]

As a pirate player, I tend to reward good RP from traders.

So for God's sake, RP whilst trading. Silence is not golden on a server where the main draw is interaction.

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User was banned for: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...tid=182360
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[SnakThree]

While I get the joking notion of "The scourge of every Trader out there is the Pirate.", I think it would be best to remove such prejudice from tutorials before new players actually think that pirates should be avoided at all costs. The profit lost to pirate is usually minuscule in comparison to what trader can make over other shipments. At least on my trade ships, I usually go through pirates so that interactions can take place.

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[Mickk]

While I get the joking notion of "The scourge of every Trader out there is the Pirate.", I think it would be best to remove such prejudice from tutorials before new players actually think that pirates should be avoided at all costs. The profit lost to pirate is usually minuscule in comparison to what trader can make over other shipments. At least on my trade ships, I usually go through pirates so that interactions can take place.

Nope, not gonna change it.

I do see where you are coming from however and I haven't said they should be avoided, I haven't even mentioned what groups a Pirate might belong to, if I had said that then it might be a problem.

I also sort of mentioned that being Pirated can be, if not fun, a good RP experience.

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Mickk: One orginal, 4 clones. Telp..teleh....mind comu...comi..come...talking ability.
A possibly very ordinary signature coming soon.
Lost your FL ID? Have NOT reinstalled your OS? Click here!

[Kyoi]

Instead of spending hours just flying around docking on every base, it would be a good idea to use a /restart and just map most of the houses instantly.

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Outcast slavery is actually far better for the victim than the corporate slavery and crime-less imprisonment of the Houses down in places like Liberty Rheinland and Bretonia

[Ash]

Instead of spending hours just flying around docking on every base, it would be a good idea to use a /restart and just map most of the houses instantly.

I agree with Ends here. While the true discovery is in discovering it for yourself, i think we all agree that trading can be time absorbing enough as it is. I'd add it in for argument's sake.

As for the rest of the guide; i like it. It's got the potential to be a good startup manual for those looking to know their way around without any prior experience. It'd be good to see a few low risk/medium profit route examples for players getting the hang of their newfound wings. You could also add in some timeframes to give new players a better idea of how long each of your steps takes. Most of the gaming community are pushed for time, so it'd be good to inform people on what to expect within a few hours or several days.

Good job.

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[Thyrzul]

There are already tools to discover trade routes fastly and efficiently without the need to get in-game. Download links can be found after approximately five minutes of browsing other parts of the Tutorials section, if not less. All it takes is just looking around with open eyes.

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