Newcomer / Intro Trading and Rares: Don't Rares undo Trading?

Lightfoot

L
In ED they have made a rather complex economy built around trading goods between different stations. But then they put in Rares which have a large return as long as you haul them about 150 LY from where you got them.

So the question is doesn't that render the rest of the trading system pointless?
Why wouldn't you always haul rares endlessly from Fujin to Lave and back?

Am I missing something about the normal trade system that would make it produce better results than rares?
 

ForgetAboutTheGalgamex

F
It's all about Cr/Hour of game time. Calculate your profit per leg divided by the time it took you to do it.

It's easy to beat the rare run because it takes so long to do it ( large denominator). Find a nice 1000Cr/Ton profit item and trade it 1-2 jumps away and you make a lot of Cr per hour.

But you need a big ship with lots of cargo to max the numerator profit. Small ships will normally make out best with rares.
 

Engadine

E
I might be wrong, and I'm sure someone will either back me up or correct me, but on a good trade route the credits per hour are higher than trading in Rares, especially once you get to ships with a larger cargo capacity.
 

cmdr lowest

C
Lightfoot said:
In ED they have made a rather complex economy built around trading goods between different stations. But then they put in Rares which have a large return as long as you haul them about 150 LY from where you got them.

So the question is doesn't that render the rest of the trading system pointless?
Why wouldn't you always haul rares endlessly from Fujin to Lave and back?

Am I missing something about the normal trade system that would make it produce better results than rares?
Click to expand...

Yeah, you're missing something.

Filling up a ship with rares is a long (looong) process and you will never be able to fill up a ship beyond 100T of cargo space, well, inside a fortnight. This is due to there being very limited quantities of rares on sale at each station. And sometimes the station doesn't even sell you all it could and you have to fly away and come back to see if they have restocked yet. So if you have a very large ship with 300T of cargo space it is more economical to trade in regular commodities.

Rares are fine for something like a Cobra with 40T of space, it's a nice little earner; but when you hit the big leagues rares simply don't pay.
 

Lightfoot

L
I know there some very big cargo haulers at the upper end of the ship prices. But I have seen very few trade routes that would return 1000 cr/ton without going some distance which means time.

Right now with a Hauler outfitted for jump distance I can fill its small cargo space, 8 ton, and make the rare jumps 3 or 4 times an hour. Right now I can bring in a profit of over 400,000 cr/hr. There are enough rare stops to keep this up for at least a short while although I have never run into making a stop and finding nothing respawned.

Does anyone have comparative numbers for normal trade? What size ship using normal trade could generate more than 400,000 cr/hr?

While Rares require you to make more jumps, in my case 8, these jumps are much faster than traveling any distance to stations. Station distance tends to be the bigger time sink than jump distance.
 

Goilveig

Goilveig
Below about 80-100T capacity, rares are much better because of high price per ton. At higher cargo volumes, non-rares do better because you can move vastly more tons per hour.
 

the100thmonkey

the100thmonkey
Lightfoot said:
I know there some very big cargo haulers at the upper end of the ship prices. But I have seen very few trade routes that would return 1000 cr/ton without going some distance which means time.
Click to expand...
I know of a route (no, I'm not telling you where the stations are: don't ask. It's mine!) that regularly keys me 400,000cr per round trip. This takes less than 15 minutes once you're familiar with the stations and can turm your ship to face the station's primary without using the navigation tab and drop out of SC as close to directly in front of the station as is practical. That's 1.6mcr/hr. 2mcr/hr is quite possible. And it's not even that good a route for pure profit. It is, however, reliable - sustained trading in a T7 w/ roughly 230t of cargo just can't dent the prices except for low demand items.

One station is a large population industrial. The other is a large population extraction and refinery. The key is that they're frontier systems with large populations and the industrial is a 'pure economy with not extraction or refinery concerns.
 

Lightfoot

L
Goilveig said:
Below about 80-100T capacity, rares are much better because of high price per ton. At higher cargo volumes, non-rares do better because you can move vastly more tons per hour.
Click to expand...

So basically until you can afford a Type 7 Transport or larger Trading other than rares is a waste of time.
 

Goilveig

Goilveig
Lightfoot said:
So basically until you can afford a Type 7 Transport or larger Trading other than rares is a waste of time.
Click to expand...

A T6 has about 100 tons of cargo when upgraded, so no, even on a T6 you are better running non-rares at some point.

Rares are great for some multi-purpose ships like the Cobra.
 

jpaulwilson1982

jpaulwilson1982
The best trade route I ever had was running gold from a station orbiting a planet to a station orbiting that planet's moon. Short distance and decent profits that paid me 2 mil in a couple of days (note that I didn't trade for 2 days straight). Not to mention it was an extremely safe trade route, which is important because dying while trading kills profits and makes you want to throw your PC out your window.
 

nazartp

N
Lightfoot said:
In ED they have made a rather complex economy built around trading goods between different stations. But then they put in Rares which have a large return as long as you haul them about 150 LY from where you got them.

So the question is doesn't that render the rest of the trading system pointless?
Why wouldn't you always haul rares endlessly from Fujin to Lave and back?

Am I missing something about the normal trade system that would make it produce better results than rares?
Click to expand...

I guess people described the points about normal trading pretty well. In summary - small to intermediate ships, i.e., up to and, potentially, including T6 - trading rares is yielding the highest return. Those huge 70-90 stop routes are rarely as profitable as a long-haul shuttle between Fujin and Lave area. I tend to do those when a get a new ship and want to get used to handling it. Take discovery scanners with you and you will rank up in exploration also in no time also. Don't forget the fuel scoop, you don't want to keep stopping for refueling. Once you hit a T6 or above, normal trading becomes the king. Short 2-3 hop routes that take about 15 minutes and yield 2,500 cr and up per ton per round trip will be much more profitable, by a factor of at least two. The bigger the ship, the higher the disparity would be.

Asp is the ultimate rare trading ship. Its ridiculous jump range and fuel tank size cut the travel time significantly. 96t of cargo is just about the break even point between rares and normal trading.
 
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Rob_the_Sparky

R
I think that is about right, I rare traded in a cobra and T6 - preferred the Cobra as I don't like being defenceless - but now in a Clipper (bought at discount) I can move <200 tonnes and trade is a clear winner at this point. My trade route is not optimised as I'm lazy but still getting ~2,300 per tonne for a ~20 min round trip. Way more than I can earn rare trading.
 
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