Looking for Advanced Tips for my Merchant

[hillm1234]

I'm new to the game and have been playing Merchant Class on Demanding. Took me awhile to get there, but I'm finally at about $900K. I have trade permits with everyone and my rep values are 158/123/91/88/79/74.

My general guidelines in this campaign have been to:
1) Only trade (no fighting, no exploring, minimal contracts).
2) Try not to make trades with factions under embargo.
3) Trade a lot of weapons/artifacts/electronics to build rep values

Rather than playing in a vacuum (pun intended), I wanted to post some of what I've learned and ask some of the experts for some additional tips.

Things I've learned:
1) Build up Stealth/Pilot skills to avoid fighting.
2) Buy and Sell Weapons/Artifacts/Electronics at the same Exchange for reputation boost with minimal loss of $.
3) Take advantage of shortages no matter how far away.
4) Surplus'es are OK, but only if convenient.
5) Javat Cutter with a water tank is a pretty good ship (50 cargo, good gas mileage).

Things I want to know:
1) How can I BUY a good ship with a bigger cargo hold? I chose Thulum because the starting screen info said they have the best merchant ships. Apparently I can't find them.
2) Even though I bought the Elite version, I tend to stay in that upper left corner because seems like the main civilized homeworlds are all near there... is my assumption that this is the merchant's "sweet spot" valid?
3) Other than "Shortage" and "Surplus" rumors, how can I take advantage of some of the other rumors?
4) How can I profit better with normal trading? I seem to barely break even with my basic strategy of buy low/sell high. Are there some special trade routes that work well for others? Prices seem pretty flat. Any luck correlating non-suplus/shortage rumors to advantage for normal trading?

Thanks, and happy trading!

[aielman]

I think that by far the biggest thing you need to reconsider is your ship.

50 cargo won't really take you far as a merchant. You need to get into the 100+ ships to really compete as a powerful merchant.

The next thing is that the game is built around the idea of cache's. holding 200-300 weapons hidden away on some planet until you see that "shortage at X" rumor pop up can pay out HUGE dividends. Thus the reason you need to have the larger ships. What I tend to do is keep large ships close to my caches and surf around with a smaller ship (like the cutter) until I find a rumor I want. When you do, grab the ship, grab the cache, and make the $$$ :-)

[aielman]

startradersrpg.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=tips&action=display&thread=809

The above link is a great place to go to research ships :-)

Scimitar and the Zendu Cutter are a couple ships that I personally like for good engine/cargo ratios.

[hillm1234]

Thanks for the tips. I was making some serious bank... bought me a Depth Freighter, got her tricked out. Then stumbled across a Hyper Freighter, got her tricked out... I think she had 202 cargo. Was up around 3MM credits when I encountered my first alien.

My statistics over 13,858 turns:
--You have had 665 encounters in space with other Captains. Of the 1 that turned hostile, you have won 0 and lost 1.

For some unknown reason, I decided to try to fight the Level 50+ alien.

Now, my RIP statistics over 13,859 turns are:
-- You have had 666 (!?!?) encounters in space with other Captains. Of the 2 that turned hostile, you have won 0 and lost 2.

Just so I know for the future, what happens if you Surrender to an Alien? I don't think it could have been worse.

Also, was it just a coincidence that my 666th encounter was my first (and last) alien encounter?

[aielman]

I generally run away as fast as I can :-)

[hillm1234]

Jul 9, 2011 8:50:50 GMT -5 aielman said:

I generally run away as fast as I can :-)

I tried to "Ignore", then I tried to run, but it was chasing me down... so instead of hitting "surrender" I found out the hard way that at the higher levels you get a "Game Over" screen.

I guess next time I'll surrender and see what happens? Anal probes?

[aielman]

yah that was actually not really serious, that the one problem with the larger ships, your screwed if you get engaged with an alien alot of times.

Granted, you make so much more money with them they are generally worth the risk if you can keep the factions semi happy with you.

[absimiliard]

Surrender to the aliens equals death.

[hillm1234]

Is it fair to say that when you an encounter a Level 50+ Alien as a peace-loving merchant that you're screwed. Seems like I had the following options:

1) Outrun (Tried that, but I was too slow. It had a whole lot of engines).
2) Fight (Tried that, but I was too weak. It had a whole lot of guns).
3) Surrender (Didn't try that, but I guess it equals death too).

Would an escape pod have kept my character alive?

[absimiliard]

Yes, an escape pod is your friend when dealing with aliens. No doubts.

-abs

[celu]

What maneuver can I do to activate my escape pod, they seem to board me and my character's health goes down to 0 in 10 turns once they boarded? It seems that we need to have good enough engine and good enough pilot skill that we don't get boarded but get shot down at medium range.