Trading

From Starport: Galactic Empires

Trading is a primary method of earning credits.

Contents 1 Basic Trading 2 Advanced Trading 3 Ship Selection 4 Haggling 4.1 Haggling Strategies

Basic Trading

The essence of trading is to buy resources at a starport, then go to a different starport and sell the resources for a profit. Each starport has a list of resources they are Buying and Selling. Therefore you need to find a compatible port to sell your resources back.

Advanced Trading

As you buy resources at ports, the supply will change. Supply is represented as a percentage. Best supply is 100%; worst is 0%. As supply decreases, it will cost more to buy resources. Therefore it makes sense to buy resources with a high supply percentage. When the supply hits 0%, there will be no more of that resource left to buy at that port. Similarly, selling resources will change the demand of that resource. Best demand is 100%; worst is 0%. When demand hits zero, you will still be able to sell the port resources, and the demand won't diminish further.

Efficient traders will find a pair of ports that are in adjacent sectors, and have matching buy/sell. For example:

• Port A selling Spice, buying Equipment
• Port B buying Equipment, selling Spice

This will turn a healthy profit, for low fuel cost. Other methods are a string of adjacent ports in which you buy from the first, sell/buy at the second, sell/buy at the third, sell/buy at the fourth... etc.

Ship Selection

You may want to buy a specialised ship when trading. If you are currently flying a combat-oriented ship, consider trading it in for something with more cargo holds while you trade.

The graph shows the warp fuel efficiency of the better trade ships, assuming 1 hop port-to-port trading.

Haggling

The merchant at each port can be haggled with. You haggle by suggesting a reduced price from the current price: 2%, 5%, 10%, 15%. This can be done over and over. The merchant will either accept, or reject your offer. You can continue to haggle even if he rejects your offer. Watch out when he starts to get angry! If you make him too angry, he will refuse to trade with you, and you will not be able to trade at that port for some time!

Good haggling generates experience.

Haggling Strategies

The merchant will provide you will positive and negative responses. Some responses are 'dangerous', meaning if you push too far he will refuse to trade with you. Still, you can push him even when you get a negative response, and often get a better deal.

Dangerous replies:

• "You're wasting my time."
• "I'm not going any lower. Take it or leave it."
• "This offer is not negotiable!"
• "What do I look like, an Antarean?"
• "I grow weary of this haggling game."

Non-threatening shut-downs:

• "I'm sorry, that's as low as I can go on that."

Here is a selection of strategies used by players:

• "I tend to try 10% first and if I get favorable results then I try 15% next time. If I'm getting hostile, irritated responses then I lower my percentage according to how irritated the merchant is and how much I need that resource." (attributed to Luna)

• "I rarely try for 15% at once. I usually hit 10% till he stops giving in, then 5% till he stops giving in, then 2% till he stops giving in. Sometimes after he's quit giving 2%, you can jump back up to 5 or 10% and he'll give in again, other times he just gets more pissed. If you've gotten 2 angry responses in a row with no price change, the odds are pretty good that hitting the haggle button one more time will get you thrown out." (attributed to CaptKirk)

• "I usually try the highest 15% untill he refuse, i also try 2 times to make sure he is serious when he tells me no and then i move on to the next lower setting, to help lower the chance to kick me out i leave the port and come right back it usually helps but unsure it is a real way to avoid being kicked out so to speak" (attributed to feenix)

• "I'll hit the 2% repeatedly. End result tends to get me 25 haggling exp per transaction. It's tedious, but much lower risk." (attributed to nukahn)

• "2% is the most efficient, as you could get to 25 exp with 0 charisma painlessly, and repeatedly. The probability of failure seems to go up exponentially, so picking the 5% and higher options is rather 'silly'" (attributed to Jiachi)

• "I hit 5% until he gives me one of the dangerous replies, then 2% until the dangerous reply, and then I accept. It does me very, very well, and I have never been kicked out of a port. " (attributed to Zavrith)