Best first steps to trading empire?

[lordpixxie]

I have the mods :

Yet another trader
world war X
agents at every station mod

i've got a Large container ship but he's a bit slow in cash making. apart from when he decides to buy and sell drones

i've also bought a feidhelm miner ship, and i just realized this things even slower in making cash.

could do with some tips

[Lander1979]

The most lucrative trades are buying URV Drones (Particuarly mkII) from manufacturers (URV BTO Line or URV Parts supply) and selling them to distributors (usually the shipyards). Use a container Rahanas or 3. You can see the potential profit when selling the drones, but a handy hint is to pay attention to the price modifier (buy at -12 down, and sell at +4 up), and watch where your'e buying and selling from; so you don't lose ships in hostile locations, and you aren't circum-navigating the known universe for one trade (if buying in Albion, sell in Albion, etc).

[Lander1979]

Also, Regarding the mod's you have chosen;

World War X- This mod is intended to add more of an "end game" element for experienced players who already have well established trade empires with defence, patrol, and attack fleets (for instance, after the end of the plot campaign).

IMO if you are trying to start a new game with WWX installed and haven't yet established a well-protected trade empire, you're going to have trouble doing so. This mod is likely going to cause you more tears than joy if installed in early game, and single enemy actions have the potential to completely disrupt the native game economy, making it even harder to nigh impossible to establish yourself (you're going to need a decent fleet to protect your own assets, forget going in solo; as WWX eats RAMBO's for breakfast).

YAT - This IMO is the lazy persons trade system, where you load the game up, send the trader out with 10 million and go AFK for the next 10 hours while the game plays itself for you and makes money. Manually trading will be much quicker in making cash (as you will be the one making the decisions), and be more fun (as you are actually participating in making yourself a billionaire, which adds a sense of accomplishment and pride once you get there ).

Trade Agents on Every Station- Personally I wouldn't use this mod, as it would deny me the right of passage that is the exploration of the X universe, also I like to purposefully leave out some stations from being a part of my trade networks as they are dangerous places for trade.
Instead I would use "CompleteStationInfoUnlocks" and "Minigame_hack", then do a little exploration.

[lordpixxie]

Also, Regarding the mod's you have chosen;

World War X- This mod is intended to add more of an "end game" element for experienced players who already have well established trade empires with defence, patrol, and attack fleets (for instance, after the end of the plot campaign).

IMO if you are trying to start a new game with WWX installed and haven't yet established a well-protected trade empire, you're going to have trouble doing so. This mod is likely going to cause you more tears than joy if installed in early game, and single enemy actions have the potential to completely disrupt the native game economy, making it even harder to nigh impossible to establish yourself (you're going to need a decent fleet to protect your own assets, forget going in solo; as WWX eats RAMBO's for breakfast).

YAT - This IMO is the lazy persons trade system, where you load the game up, send the trader out with 10 million and go AFK for the next 10 hours while the game plays itself for you and makes money. Manually trading will be much quicker in making cash (as you will be the one making the decisions), and be more fun (as you are actually participating in making yourself a billionaire, which adds a sense of accomplishment and pride once you get there ).

Trade Agents on Every Station- Personally I wouldn't use this mod, as it would deny me the right of passage that is the exploration of the X universe, also I like to purposefully leave out some stations from being a part of my trade networks as they are dangerous places for trade.
Instead I would use "CompleteStationInfoUnlocks" and "Minigame_hack", then do a little exploration.

i decided to install YAT as i don't like micro managing. for instance once i get 5+ freighters there's going to be a lot of clicking involved to manage them all no?

[pref]

Build a fusion and RMP fab.. both sells nice, and lets you build more fabs later.

If you acquire agents all over the place, there will always be lucrative deals - no special preparation needed for trading otherwise. Except it's best to get a mod for that (trade agents), or you have to smalltalk like a 100 times.
Forgot the name unfortunately, can't find it atm (TAF maybe?).

[Lander1979]

i decided to install YAT as i don't like micro managing. for instance once i get 5+ freighters there's going to be a lot of clicking involved to manage them all no?

For the first few days micro-managing the trades on 3 freighters isn't too taxing and can be quite fun, especially when you get a good run and make 3 to 4 million profit from the one trade. I usually have enough bankroll to get a URV Parts supply station up and running after about day 4, at which time I give the ships to the station and let it do the money making, while I slowly rebuild my fleet of 3 container Rahanas. I usually don't use more than 3 ships for drone trading as that is the saturation limit of the market in Albion (I'm playing a plot campaign game and haven't unlocked DV , OL, or TU space yet) with regards to supply and demand. Having any more trade ships than that is redundant, as the first 3 ships got all the trade runs for that particular manufacturing cycle (each cycle is an hour and most stations generally complete there cycles within a short time of each other). So generally I only have to set trades up for the ships once every hour which isn't overwhelming in the least, and gives me something to do in the meantime while I wait to get rich.

Once the first URV Parts Station is expanded with all production modules, It becomes a major money press and you generally won't need to do any more trading through the trades system. Average income from the station is around 45 million deposited in my account 2 to 3 times daily.

TAF (Trade Agents Forever) is another good mod as Pref suggests, IIRC it allows you to comm NPC's from space and buy Trade updates from them, instead of having to dock and smalltalk them.

[Karmaticdamage]

If you're looking for the fastest way then capping titurels and doing pirate missions will get you start up money the fastest. The pirate missions have you kill neutral faction civilian ships so the rep hit is tiny and they pay up towards 7mil each. Build your own source of fusion reactors and reinforced metal plating first as these two are a pain to gather enough of to build new stations. After that you can just start cranking out stations like its nothing at all.