poryg
Templar
[ Star Traders 2 Supporter ]
Posts: 1,723 
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Post by poryg on Sept 11, 2015 12:21:07 GMT -5
Stealth skill high enough to cause most opponents to not be able to run away, tactics skill low enough to not demolish the torps and therefore blow the entire ship up, and pilot skill emphasised. Well done, soon you might try another way or difficulty too  |
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Post by Fourth Horseman on Sept 11, 2015 12:48:38 GMT -5
I'm thinking of starting a "bloody boots" type. I think first I want to figure out pacifist merchant. I like the idea of the challenge of successfully trading non restricted goods. Have not decided yet. |
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Post by Fourth Horseman on Sept 11, 2015 18:44:59 GMT -5
Not asking for help here, at least not yet. Trying my hand at merchant... failed miserably twice. Back to the think tank |
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Post by slayernz on Sept 11, 2015 19:42:43 GMT -5
Merchanting is fun, but I've found the only way you can make real money doing just that is with shortage/surplus rumors, and relying on your hidden caches. You are using caches in wilderness areas right? I've had caches with thousands of units of each type of cargo, making for very easy resolution of shortages, especially with the Devaltos flagship or the Slayerz NR2. Imagine dumping 204 units of Artifacts in a shortage situation!!! An easy $1M trade Note the NR2 is upgraded with a WF tank so you can maximise on the shortage opportunities! Now if you really want to be good at trading - the most lucrative way of making a profit is if your cost of goods is zero. How do you do that? Blockade Steel Song and raid all their ships of course  |
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poryg
Templar
[ Star Traders 2 Supporter ]
Posts: 1,723
|
Post by poryg on Sept 11, 2015 23:30:06 GMT -5
Merchanting is fun, but I've found the only way you can make real money doing just that is with shortage/surplus rumors, and relying on your hidden caches. You are using caches in wilderness areas right? I've had caches with thousands of units of each type of cargo, making for very easy resolution of shortages, especially with the Devaltos flagship or the Slayerz NR2. Imagine dumping 204 units of Artifacts in a shortage situation!!! An easy $1M trade Note the NR2 is upgraded with a WF tank so you can maximise on the shortage opportunities! Now if you really want to be good at trading - the most lucrative way of making a profit is if your cost of goods is zero. How do you do that? Blockade Steel Song and raid all their ships of course Once I mnanaged to get a normal buying price of spice lower than sale price on the same planet, making an opportunity for infinite money  (Buy price of spice $8, sale price $48, but unfortunately there was no surplus, so there were like 30 or 40 unites of spice. |
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Post by Fourth Horseman on Sept 12, 2015 4:39:41 GMT -5
I use the cache system, but not like I should. My pirates typically only cache metal, chemicals, lux, and A/W/E items.
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Post by Fourth Horseman on Sept 12, 2015 5:01:55 GMT -5
Ok, how do you keep a merchant fleet happy? I know to carry lux items. Run taxi missions?
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Post by Officer Genious on Sept 12, 2015 6:44:18 GMT -5
Ok, how do you keep a merchant fleet happy? I know to carry lux items. Run taxi missions? Or buy them booze at the spice hall. |
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Post by Fourth Horseman on Sept 12, 2015 8:28:57 GMT -5
Ok, thanks. Will keep an eye on it when I check rumors. When it is around 6 7 I'll look for taxi missions.
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poryg
Templar
[ Star Traders 2 Supporter ]
Posts: 1,723
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Post by poryg on Sept 12, 2015 14:47:21 GMT -5
Ok, how do you keep a merchant fleet happy? I know to carry lux items. Run taxi missions? Completed mission boosts morale. Won battle increases morale. Spice hall stuff increases morale. Ending a shortage on an independent planet increases morale. It gets decreased by: Surrendering to ships that want to attack you, lack of waterfuel and doing missions against independents. From this it is pretty easy to figure out how to not keep the crew angry Btw. At spice hall you can't boost morale higher than to 7 |
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Post by Fourth Horseman on Sept 12, 2015 21:24:32 GMT -5
Merchant is a love hate thing I see. I find it challenging, especially since I don't want to cross class him as an explorer. I think explorer skills would push me over the edge and I might as well play a smuggler.
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poryg
Templar
[ Star Traders 2 Supporter ]
Posts: 1,723
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Post by poryg on Sept 13, 2015 0:39:15 GMT -5
Merchant is a love hate thing I see. I find it challenging, especially since I don't want to cross class him as an explorer. I think explorer skills would push me over the edge and I might as well play a smuggler. You're not quite right. My merchant never needed more than 25 negotiate and 15 pilot. After this I gave him huge stealth to avoid alien ships if he meets any. But there would surely be points to spare for 9 explorer (with 25 crew whip you can be happy in top left quadrant If you want, you can have 2 ships, one with low crew for exploring, the other one with mega cargo for merchandise (the greater max crew, the worse casualties are with exploring, no matter how huge your explorer and intimidate is, so I recommend a low crew but huge cargo ship) |
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Post by Fourth Horseman on Sept 13, 2015 10:51:32 GMT -5
Well so far with my merchant I hold a trade permit with all but Rychart (-3), and they are in a spy war and a trade embargo. I have over 100k. Ship has a W/F tank and the recycle plant. I'm thinking of starting to start a cache by just picking up the goods from the cheapest places I can find them. Ideas?
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poryg
Templar
[ Star Traders 2 Supporter ]
Posts: 1,723
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Post by poryg on Sept 13, 2015 11:36:47 GMT -5
I don't know to be honest. I don't use exploring too much, as it takes about 30 weeks or so in the game to go for one raid. I only use exploring (with no skill points) on impossible to gain some starting money. I don't stash either, usually I have nothing to stash on free version.
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Post by Fourth Horseman on Sept 13, 2015 14:37:37 GMT -5
I'm using Elite. I'm just choosing not to do explore. Using cache for the supply/shortage can pull cash in like a black hole sucks in... well,... every damn thing lol
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(Buy price of spice $8, sale price $48, but unfortunately there was no surplus, so there were like 30 or 40 unites of spice.
