At Faq master. Modified trading document. Any better?

[Gandalf The White]

Trading in either X-Beyond The Frontier or X-Tension is exactly the same regardless. There is an additional way to trade in X-Tension, but this will be discussed later. For the moment, it is important to discuss the best technique that you should adopt. In order that you are able to trade effectively in either game, then it is very important that you are able to grasp the concept of the X-economy. For when you start producing goods of your own, then this will prove very important indeed. Factory placement won't be discussed in this document, but trading and empire building are very much connected.

Firstly, we will concentrate on a technique that will best help you to trade more efficiently.

The X-economy, like many others, works on the principle of supply and demand. This in simple terms, means that if there is a great demand for a particular product, then a constant supply of resources is required so that the final product can be produced and sold. The more of a particular product there is, then the price will naturally be less than if it were in great demand, but supply wasn't constant.

Now lets take a very simple trading route as an example. If you are in the sector Argon Prime, look at the list of factories that there are in that sector. The factories not including the ship yard are:

Argon Space Equipment Dock
Free Argon Trading Station
Cahoona Bakery
Cattle Ranch
Shield production Facility
Solar Power Plant
Solar Power Plant

Note, you can't sell Energy Cells to the equipment dock or Trading Station.
Note, this is universal no matter where you are or what race you are trading with.
But, taking the other 3 factories, they all need energy cells. Every factory in the X-Universe needs Energy Cells.

Now, lets just assume for ease of this document that the Shield Production Facility is full of Shields, Energy Cells, Ore and Quantum Tubes, but near to empty on Cahoona Meet Stakes, that the Cahoona Bakery is full of all resources except for Argnue Beef, and that it was full of Cahoona Meet Stakes, the Cattle Ranch was full of Argnue Beef which it sells, but empty of EC's and the solar power plants both were full of Energy Cells, then it would be as follows.

Go to the Solar Power Plant and purchase as many Energy Cells as you can fit into your Cargo Bay, look at the price. Remember the price or write it down. Then, fly to the Cattle Ranch and look at the price of Energy Cells. You will see that the supply of Energy Cells is non existent and that the price of them as a result is astronomically high. This is because the demand for Energy Cells is great but the supply is not constant. So, you would sell them and then make one hell of a profit. Then, you would purchase all the Argnue Beef to sell to the Cahoona Bakery. Again, you would need to look at the price and note it down. Then fly to the Cahoona Bakery and sell off the Argnue Beef. Again, you will notice that the price is astronomically high. This is because the amount of Argnue Beef they have is very low or non existent so, you will make a great profit.

Then, purchase all the cahoona Meet Stakes that you can and then take them to the Shield Production Facility and sell them off. Again, you will be making a good profit.

Now take the shields to the space equipment dock as there is a full stock of these. Take them to the equipment dock and them sell them there.

Note, there is something that you should know about equipment docks and it also applies to trading stations as well. You should think of them as retail stores. because, no matter how much you purchase/sell to either the trading station or equipment docks, you will always see the same price. Which is an average price. So you will make an average profit only. But selling the small shields and small weapons is always profitable providing you purchase a full stock of the product. Now you are asking how you will know about whether the factory is full of a particular product. That is a good question. Well, if you look at the top right hand of the screen, you will find that where there are numbers showing the levels of stock currently in the factory, there are also blue bars. Depending on the length of the bar, will depend on how much of the product there is in stock. When you are purchasing something, the longer the bar, the more of the product there is and the cheaper it will be. So, when you are purchasing something, you can use the blue bars to determine the stock levels. You will learn the length of the bars for yourself. There is no point in me giving you an exact length, because it will be different depending on the size of the screen that you are using.

When you are selling the product, you want to make sure that the bar is as short as possible. When you have determined how long a bar is when stock is full, if you half it, then that's how much roughly a station/equipment dock will purchase the product from you. So, if you are going to sell to a trading station/equipment dock, then you need to be aware of this. This is universal whether you play X-Beyond The Frontier or X-Tension.

When you are playing X-Tension, then you have an additional way of making money a great deal quicker, but it will take a little more effort and some investment to go with it. This method of trading is called (remote trading.)

Remote trading is a way of trading in a sector that you are not in or, several sectors at once.

In order to do remote trading, you will need the following:

1. A Trading System Extention on your current ship. You can pick this up from race owned equipment docks.

2. A Navigation Relay Satellite or Nav sat in the sector or sectors that you wish to trade in.
3. Most obvious, another ship. i personally, maximise out a Boron Dolphin for speed and cargo. I have had up to 10 remote traders and it has made me a great deal of money.

The way that you control the remote traders is simple. Find the ship and communicate with it. Doesn't matter if it's in a station or not, because you will be communicating with them whether they are in a station or not. Communicate with the ship in the way that you would normally do it, once the communications menu has been presented, you will see a set of 2 options. Navigation commands and communicate with all ships in sector. Press enter on the current option selected or press 1. You will then be presented with a further series of options. Follow me, Stay at this location, Fly to following station, Dock with carrier and Set new home base to. Select Fly to following station or hit number 3 and then you will be displayed the map of all the sectors that you have currently been to. Select the sector where you want to send the remote trader either by using the curser or hitting the first letter of that sector. Note, if there are sectors that share the same first letter, then the selection will run through in alphabetical order. Once you have found the desired sector, then press enter then you will be displayed with the list of factories in that current sector. Highlight the factory that you wish to send your remote trader and press enter and it will be on it's way. Note, in order that you know that the trip will be worth it, it's worth while checking out the factory out before you send your ship on it's journey. You should really do this before you send it on it's way or your remote trader may very well arrive at the desired factory to find that either they have run low on the product that you wish to purchase or, they have already got a more than sufficient stock of the product that you wish to sell so your profit will be minimal or you may even make a loss. It's important to note, that even with checking the factory first, there is nothing stopping a ship that is either faster than yours or closer than you are from getting to the factory first and steeling your profit. So, although checking the factory is advisable, you will have to allow for random chance which is either in your favor or not.

[Rapier]

Cheers Doc, Not sure if it's any better until I get a chance to read it. I've got a couple of very busy days coming up. So what am I doing here???

[Gandalf The White]

Hi. Well, am in the middle of doing an empire building doc as well. This is for another project, but the faq is also welcome to it when it is complete.

[DocFX]

Thanks, this info. is very useful!...

[Xenon_Slayer]

another resurrection, another lock...