Trading

The market#

Dock and open Market. Each station (and each planetary spaceport) has its own order book: what you list here sells here, and what you buy lands in this station's hangar. Prices differ from station to station, which is what makes hauling pay.

• Browse lists items by category (ships, modules, ammunition, materials, components, planetary goods, trade goods, blueprints, relics and more), with search, sorting and filters for hull class, slot and size. Tick Listed at this station only to see just what is on sale here.
• Select an item to see its fact sheet (stats, requirements and where it is found), a 7-day price history and the order book: the cheapest sellers and the best buyers.
• A dot next to an order marks a pilot's order. The rest are the station's own traders.
• My orders lists all your open orders at every station, with a Cancel button for each.

Prices at other stations#

Under the trade box, Find nearest lists the stations that sell or buy the selected item, nearest first, with the price, the quantity, the security of the system and a Set route button that plots the way there (press Travel to fly it). Price range shows the low, average and high of the orders and of the last 7 days of trades, here or across your reach, and Best haul shows what buying at the cheapest seller and selling to the best buyer would leave you per unit and per m³ after tax.

• At Trading 1 you see every market in your own system, so you know which station to dock at. The Trading skill reaches further out, a jump at a time.
• When this station has no sellers (or no buyers), the trade box points you to the nearest one with Route to nearest seller. If it is past your reach you still get the station and the route, just not its price.

Past your reach the market still names the nearest station that sells or buys an item, with the route there, but not its price. From the game's own data

Station traders and player traders#

Every station keeps a backstop of its own buy and sell orders, so a new pilot can always sell ore and buy ammunition. Those orders are deliberately never the best deal: station sellers ask a premium over an item's reference value, station buyers pay a discount, and their stock is shallow and refills over hours. Pilots who mine, refine, build and haul undercut them and still profit.

• Every station buys all the belt ores, refined metals, planetary goods and salvage, and sells the basic ammunition and small modules.
• Trade hubs carry the widest range; the faction home trade hubs add large weapons, bigger hulls and their blueprints, and Archivists who buy relics.
• Garrisons specialize in weapons and combat hulls, foundries in industry, mining and components, and pirate hideouts in contraband and heavy guns.
• Each faction's stations sell their specialties a little cheaper and in depth. Prices also rise the further you are from Secure space.

Buying and selling#

The trade box under the order book offers two ways to trade, and both work for buying and selling.

Buy now / Sell now

Trades instantly with the best order on the book. Buy now takes the cheapest sellers first; Sell now fills the best buyers first. You never need an order slot, and no broker fee is charged.

Place buy order / Place sell order

Posts your own order at your Limit price. Whatever already matches fills at once (you always get the better of the two prices); the rest waits on the book until someone takes it. A resting order uses an order slot and pays the broker fee.

1. Choose the source

   Set Sell from to Station storage or Ship cargo. The box shows how many units you have there.

2. Set quantity and price

   Type a quantity and a limit price. Click a price in the order book to copy it.

3. Check the totals

   Under the price you see the total, the volume, and the broker fee and sales tax at your Trading level.

4. Place the order

   Click Place sell order. The goods leave your storage now and wait in escrow on the book.

5. Collect

   When a buyer takes your order, the credits (after tax) go straight to your wallet, wherever you are.

• A buy order holds the full price in escrow from your wallet. When it fills, the goods go to that station's hangar.
• Orders are filled best price first, then oldest first. Your own orders never trade with each other.
• Orders stay open for 30 days. A canceled or expired buy order refunds its escrow; a sell order's goods go back to that station's hangar. The broker fee is not refunded.
• There is no way to edit an order's price: cancel it and post a new one.

Fees and taxes#

Two charges apply on the market, and both shrink as your Trading skill grows. They are the same for every pilot, members or not.

Broker fee

Charged when you post an order, on the value of the part that waits on the book (at least ₡1). Instant trades pay none.

Sales tax

Deducted from the seller's proceeds on every sale, to a pilot or to a station buyer. Buyers pay no tax.

Contract listing fee

Charged when you post a contract: 1% of the asking price, at least ₡1,000. It is never refunded.

Maker's Market needs Industry at the same level (its tiers start at 20). From the game's own data

Each Trading level takes 0.01 points off the broker fee and 0.02 points off the tax. Tycoon at Trading 90 takes a further 0.25 points off the tax, and Maker's Market (Trading with Industry) up to 0.2 points more, for the makers who sell their own goods.

Selling instantly into a buy order with Sell now skips the broker fee: you pay only the sales tax. From the game's own data

The contract listing fee is charged on the asking price, with a minimum of ₡1,000. From the game's own data

Contracts and transfers#

A contract is an item exchange between pilots, away from the order book: a bundle of items for a fixed price. Open Contracts at any station.

Available here

Public contracts at this station, and private ones made out to you. Accept one to pay the price; the items go to your hangar here.

New contract

Pick up to 20 item lines from this station's hangar, set a price (₡0 gives the items away), add an optional title, and optionally name a pilot to make it private.

My contracts

Everything you have listed, anywhere, with a Cancel button.

• Items wait in escrow at the station where you listed them. A buyer has to dock there to accept.
• Private contracts made out to you at other stations are listed too, with a Travel button to fly there.
• A contract stays open for 14 days. If nobody accepts it, or you cancel it, the items come back to your hangar at that station. The listing fee is kept.
• Contracts are the way to sell a whole fitted package, trade a blueprint with a friend, or hand a clanmate a stack of materials.

Sending credits#

To pay another pilot directly, open Wallet and use Send credits with their name, the amount and an optional memo. The Wallet's Journal lists every credit that came in or went out: sales, purchases, fees, bounties, mission rewards and transfers.

Hauling and courier work#

Prices differ between stations, and moving goods from where they are cheap to where they are dear is honest work. Look for the gap: an item a foundry makes and a trade hub imports, ore from a Lawless belt sold in the core, consumer goods carried out to frontier outposts.

The reference value is what the game's economy is balanced around. Station prices sit around it, higher where a good is imported and lower where it is made. From the game's own data

• Value per cubic meter decides what a full hold is worth. Luxury goods and Dusk Resin pack the most value into the least space; Industrial Machinery the least.
• Dusk Resin is contraband in Secure space: the Accord Marshals scan for it. Carry it there at your own risk.
• Planetary spaceports sell the goods their world produces, often far cheaper than any station in orbit.

From the game's own data

Courier missions#

The Job Board at every station offers courier missions: crates of trade goods to deliver to a station a few jumps away. They are the easiest way to learn hauling.

• When you accept, the crates appear in your station hangar and a collateral (twice the goods' value) leaves your wallet.
• Deliver the crates to the named station's hangar and claim the mission there: you get the collateral back plus the reward, which grows with the number of jumps and crates.
• You have three days, and at most five missions active at once. Lose the crates and you lose the collateral.
• Courier missions train Navigation and Trading.

Vanguard items#

A few items belong to the Vanguard Charter's members-only activities. They carry a Vanguard tag in the market, in tooltips and in contracts, and they follow one simple rule: they change hands only between Charter members.

• Vanguard hulls as packaged ships: Astrolabe, Driftcomber.
• Retainer Writs, the contracts that hire a Retainer warship for a number of hours.
• Extracting gear: Burrow Rig Kit, Auger Rig Kit, Core Bore Kit, Tidal Rig Kit, Seismic Beacon, Dark Matter Harness I, Dark Matter Harness II, Dark Matter Harness III, Dark Matter Harness IV.
• The blueprints of any of these.

• Only a pilot with an active Charter can buy, list, sell or receive one, on the market, in a contract or as a gift. A sale only completes when both sides hold the Charter.
• If your Charter lapses you keep every Vanguard item: nothing is deleted. You just can't use, list or send them until you renew.
• At the lapse, your open market orders for Vanguard items are canceled (buy escrow back to your wallet, listings back to their station hangar) and your open contracts holding them go back to your hangar. Private contracts made out to you with Vanguard items return to their sellers. You get a message explaining what happened.

Everything else, including Aether Vouchers, trades freely between all pilots. Read more about the Charter in Vanguard and the economy.

Trading tips#

1. Start with what you make. Ore you mined, metal you refined and ammunition you built cost you time, not credits. List them a little under the cheapest seller and let them sell while you play.
2. Read the price history. A spike is not a price. Look at the 7-day chart before you post an order far from the usual range.
3. Undercut by a little, not a lot. Being the cheapest seller by a small margin is enough: the book fills best price first.
4. Use buy orders for patience, Buy now for speed. A buy order a little above the best bid often fills within hours and costs less than the cheapest ask.
5. Mind the fees on thin margins. At low Trading, broker fee plus tax take a few percent of every sale. Check the totals line before you trade small spreads.
6. Sell instantly when the spread is tight. If the best buyer is close to the cheapest seller, Sell now skips the broker fee and frees your order slot.
7. Haul what is dense. A full hold of cheap, bulky goods may be worth less than a corner of luxury goods.
8. Train Trading early if you trade a lot. Order Book perks add slots at 10, 30, 60 and 80, the reach perks show prices further out (1 jump at 10, 2 at 20), and the fee and tax cuts add up over thousands of sales.
9. Build what's missing. Items with no sellers at a station, or only the station's own pricey stock, are an open invitation to a manufacturer. See Manufacturing.
10. Keep an eye on My orders. Orders expire after 30 days, and a repriced competitor may have left yours behind.

• Mining and industryMake the goods you sell.
• SkillsTrading perks, slots and synergies.
• Vanguard and the economyCredits, Aether and how money moves.