Guide / Tutorial Yokai's guide to recognizing (and finding) a great trade route

[Ted Striker]

Explaining that in detail would be really time consuming and redundant, as it is not THAT difficult to figure it out. Take a close look at the commodity market of every economy. Things that are on medium/high supply there are most of the time produced there. Things that are on medium/high demand are needed. Sometimes you just need to read the name or description of a certain commodity to know who will buy it. Furthermore the right window in the market tells you where the currently selected good is exported to / imported from. These export/import data can also be displayed in the galaxy map for systems in a certain distance. Combine those sources of information and you'll soon get the general idea of what to trade between certain economies.

For example if you are on a High Tech station you'll notice that plenty of the goods in the "Technology" category are in med/high stock and can be bought below galactic average. Now your eye falls on a commodity named "Land Enrichment Systems". Well... who could need that!? YES, RIGHT! The agricultural station just aroud the corner could sure make some use of that thing. You decide to buy some of them and head out right away. But wait.. if that plays out to be a profitable deal you might want to come back and get more of these Land Enrichment Systems. Now what could you haul on your way back. Obviously that would be something which is produced on the agricultural station and sold there for below average prices. So it can only be food or "legal drugs" (Tobacco/Wine/Beer/Liquor). Check if your current High Tech station has a high demand for any of these goods and is paying above average for it. As a rule of thumb: The more expensive goods tend to yield more profit/ton. So the best trading good you can get at an agricultural station is mostly tobacco. Unfortunately this is banned at many stations. So eventually you may have to stick to Coffee/Tea/Animal meat on your way back. Take a screenshot of the selling prices for these goods at your High Tech station. So you'll know which commod makes the best profit on your way back. Voila! You figured out your first trading route between a High-Tech and an Agricultural economy.

I admit.. this example is really basic and simple. But it works that way with all the economy types. Sometimes you can't just figure out your best bet only by the name of the commodity itself. But once you start trading, you'll get the hang of it and figure out the most profitable items between certain economies rather quickly.

Hope I could help.

The problem comes when there's more than one economy. I've found plenty of routes with minor profits but when it's extraction/industrial to high tech/refinery and certain commodites you expect to see are missing entirely it gets convoluted. I have a spreadsheet that tells me what commodities are in demand to and from each economy (like gold is best from extraction to industrial) but a lot of the listed commodities aren't available like it says. Go to an extraction station to buy indite or bertrandite to sell to a refinery nearby and they never have any, or a refinery to buy superconductors and they aren't even listed )unless my spreadsheet is wrong and they aren't found at refineries). Supposedly they're bought at refineries and sold to industrial and high tech. I've just never seen them for sale anywhere.

That depends on what is fetching the best profit at any given point in time


Usually the commodity on the Flagship leg of the route is a precious metal like Palladium. Palladium is produced by extraction economies and tends to be desired most by High Tech commodities. The trick is getting good profits on the other legs of the route alongside the flagship route.

Imperial Slaves can be another good commodity. Obviously those are found in Imperial Space, and you can usually find them on high population Agricultural worlds.

Fancy medicines like Performance Enchancers and Progenitor cells can also been seen fetching goods prices frequently. Usually they're desired by the population of wealthy systems. The greater the population of wealthy citizens, the greater the demand. Consequently wealthy agricultural worlds tend to have the highest demand for these medicines because Agri worlds tend to have HUUUUUUGE populations.

I didn't even know wealthy was a stat. How do you see if a world is wealthy anyway?

 

[blowback]

Cr/(Ton*Hr) - A splendid unit, that should be named in your honour.

 

[HeavyGroovez]

Currently running Performance Enhancers and Palladium over a 40LY route that i found over the course of 2 days searching.

Its from a Very High Population High-Tech/Refinery system to a Large Population Industrial/Extraction system.

Getting 1525 profit on the Palladium and 1360 on the Enhancers.

Its a 15 minute round trip and gets me 1.15 million with the Anacondas 436 ton hold.

Making 4.5 million an hour if it all goes smoothly and space donkeys dont interfere..

 

[anday]

The problem comes when there's more than one economy. I've found plenty of routes with minor profits but when it's extraction/industrial to high tech/refinery and certain commodites you expect to see are missing entirely it gets convoluted. I have a spreadsheet that tells me what commodities are in demand to and from each economy (like gold is best from extraction to industrial) but a lot of the listed commodities aren't available like it says. Go to an extraction station to buy indite or bertrandite to sell to a refinery nearby and they never have any, or a refinery to buy superconductors and they aren't even listed )unless my spreadsheet is wrong and they aren't found at refineries). Supposedly they're bought at refineries and sold to industrial and high tech. I've just never seen them for sale anywhere.

The thing is that not every extraction station is the same. Some will have low supply on gold and high supply on indium. Others will sell no indium at all but have load of gold in stock. Just because a station is of a certain economy, it doesn't automatically have all the items in supply/demand, that it "should". To complicate that matter, a single station can be of more than one economy type. Here sure is a lot of combinations like "High Tech and Refinery" or "Extraction and Refinery" stations out there. That's where the actual searching comes in. The Galaxy map is helpful at that. If you search for superconductors, don't just fly to the next refinery system in try and error style. Go to the map and in the View-Tab use the "show trade routes" feature. Deselect everything but superconductors. If available mouse over nearby refineries (you can use the "show by color" filter on the top to hide other economy systems, though this feature will occasionally still hide systems where refineries are combined with a second type of economy, like the ones stated above) and buy trade data. Eventually you'll see corredsponding lines for superconductor trade routes origining at a certain system. You can be quite sure that there will be at least one station in that system selling superconductors. This is still no indicator for a low/good price or a high stock. But you'll know they are sold here. Fly there, check the price, rinse and repeat.

Good luck.

edit: got a little mix up with "station" and "system" straight.

 

[Cmdr Sharky]

All good advice, thanks for this, except:

A. Do your trade runs in Solo mode, even if you like PvP. Dealing with more difficult interdictions by real players eats up tons of time.

No, not ever. I will never do this. I trade in open mode 100%. And I've never been attacked by a player, not once. Come on in and join me, the water's lovely.

 

[Yokai]

Currently running Performance Enhancers and Palladium over a 40LY route that i found over the course of 2 days searching.

Its from a Very High Population High-Tech/Refinery system to a Large Population Industrial/Extraction system.

Getting 1525 profit on the Palladium and 1360 on the Enhancers.

Its a 15 minute round trip and gets me 1.15 million with the Anacondas 436 ton hold.

Making 4.5 million an hour if it all goes smoothly and space donkeys dont interfere..

Nice find!

 

[SvennoJ]

Nice thread, only now it makes me even less willing to go on to find greener pastures.

I'm currently trading palladium and mineral extractors for 1773 profit/ton round trip, 1 jump, both stations within 20ls of the star. They are both rotating cubes though, but I've gotten quite experienced at landing in them without scrapes, down to 12 minutes round trip. With the outer docks I can never tell what end the front of the ship is supposed to be, so waste time turning the ship around. It's 120ly from Sol, hardly any traffic to run into.

The problem is, I get bored quite easily, and it seems I only get stuck with more fuel hungry ships that are even more painful to lose. (Nm the thought of losing a 1.2 million load of Palladium) Being poor really is freedom. I can always just leave the cash in the bank and go exploring in a Hauler.

 

[Armchair]

You're splitting hairs. Everyone else reading this understands the context in which "cr/ton/hour" is used in this guide (and entire thread, except for you).

Every time you make a haul, you're getting some "unit profit" per ton hauled. That's cr per ton, or cr/ton as a shorthand notation, because unitProfit or similar is less immediately intuitive for most people.

If you make 1500 unitProfit in one direction and 500 unitProfit in the other direction, that's 2000 unitProfit for the round trip.
If you make 1500 cr/ton in one direction and 500 cr/ton in the other direction, that's 2000 cr/ton for the round trip.

If you can do that 2000 cr/ton round trip in 15 minutes, thats 8000 cr/ton/hour.

In case that doesn't satisfy you, let me try a different approach: You yourself interpreted my example A > B haul as generating "a profit of 1594 cr/t". Then you shorthanded it as "you have made 1594cr profit". So you demonstrate that you know exactly what I meant by "1594 cr/ton/hour" (most people intuitively interpret that as "profit per hour").

The reason I phrase my guide in terms of cr/ton/hour is simple. I'm a tech writer for a living (lol) and I actually work with pricing science software these days. So I'm more than familiar with all the precise terminology of micro- and macro-economics, and of mathematical operations in general. But most people aren't. MOST people will think in terms of "I have 100 ton capacity. What's the most per ton I can generate in X amount of time?" Ergo: cr/ton/hour

I personally dislike it when people use a cr/ton/round trip metric. It makes it more harder to directly compare two routes with varying numbers of legs. For example, I can accurately say that I'm making 4750 credits per ton round trip (1400 + 1700 + 1650). I believe that my current route is extraordinary, but using the 4750 credits/ton/round trip metric makes it look even more spectacular if you didn't know that it was a triangle instead of a two legged route.

Usually I assume that people are talking about two legged routes since I think I am part of a minority that likes triangles.

IMO, credits/ton/hour and average credits/ton are better for directly comparing routes.

 

[Yokai]

I personally dislike it when people use a cr/ton/round trip metric. It makes it more harder to directly compare two routes with varying numbers of legs. For example, I can accurately say that I'm making 4750 credits per ton round trip (1400 + 1700 + 1650). I believe that my current route is extraordinary, but using the 4750 credits/ton/round trip metric makes it look even more spectacular if you didn't know that it was a triangle instead of a two legged route.

Usually I assume that people are talking about two legged routes since I think I am part of a minority that likes triangles.

IMO, credits/ton/hour and average credits/ton are better for directly comparing routes.

Exactly. How long does that "round trip" take? If you normalize everything to how many credits-per-ton-profit you're earning in an hour, it becomes easy to see if you're above or below a given benchmark.

Today I found a route with one 13 LY jump between two exterior docks, and each doc is less than 500 LS from their respective ingress point. 1068 cr/ton in one direction and 1132 cr/ton in the other direction. I'm pulling a steady 2200 cr/ton profit on each 12-minute round trip (you can come in so hot at exterior docks), so that 5 x 2200 = 11000 cr/ton/hour. Total milk run. They're out there if you look!

I'm going to miss exterior doc stations when I move up to a T7.

 

[Armchair]

Exactly. How long does that "round trip" take? If you normalize everything to how many credits-per-ton-profit you're earning in an hour, it becomes easy to see if you're above or below a given benchmark.

Today I found a route with one 13 LY jump between two exterior docks, and each doc is less than 500 LS from their respective ingress point. 1068 cr/ton in one direction and 1132 cr/ton in the other direction. I'm pulling a steady 2200 cr/ton profit on each 12-minute round trip (you can come in so hot at exterior docks), so that 5 x 2200 = 11000 cr/ton/hour. Total milk run. They're out there if you look!

I'm going to miss exterior doc stations when I move up to a T7.

Round trip is ~20 minutes.

4750 * 3 = 14250 cr/ton/hour.

All legs are based from stations capable of supporting large vessels, so I am quite looking forward to my T7 and eventually T9.

Believe it or not, the Python is capable of operating from medium pads. (Federal dropship too for that matter). They're both options for returning to routes that require medium pads.

Although the Python is finding itself in the same situation that the Asp was back in the beta. It may be rebalanced to not be so amazing at everything.


I personally don't like working out of outposts. They tend to only have 1 medium pad. A route's round trip time can tank fast once you hear "docking request denied"

edit:
although I suppose one could re-enter and re-exit supercruise to try and reset the pad when playing in solo mode.

 

[Yokai]

Round trip is ~20 minutes.

4750 * 3 = 14250 cr/ton/hour.

All legs are based from stations capable of supporting large vessels, so I am quite looking forward to my T7 and eventually T9.

Believe it or not, the Python is capable of operating from medium pads. (Federal dropship too for that matter). They're both options for returning to routes that require medium pads.

Although the Python is finding itself in the same situation that the Asp was back in the beta. It may be rebalanced to not be so amazing at everything.


I personally don't like working out of outposts. They tend to only have 1 medium pad. A route's round trip time can tank fast once you hear "docking request denied"

edit:
although I suppose one could re-enter and re-exit supercruise to try and reset the pad when playing in solo mode.

My trick is to just save to main menu if I get "denied" twice in a row. Then log in again. Usually you get "granted" right away after doing that.

And ya, noticed a Python and an Asp at one of my stations just now. Didn't realize anything larger than Type 6 was capable of medium pads. So much to learn, still.

I know the Type 6 feels so sluggish compared to the Cobra, and from looking at stats it seems like the Type 7 is even more sluggish than the Type 6, but I'm getting pretty good at coming in hot in a T6 even for letterbox stations, even squeezing past ships queued up at/in the letterbox. Don't think I'll be nearly as agile in a T7. Between that and being locked out of external docks for who knows how long, I'm actually wondering how badly I want to step up into the Clipper/Dropship/Python/Anaconda range for fighting. Between a Cobra and a Viper, you pretty much have everything for combat fun and exploration, and occasional runs in a T6 can more than cover heavy losses in the Cobra/Viper range. Still, going from 100 cargo per haul to 216 cargo is a hefty boost even if travel time is slowed down....

 

[Armchair]

Back in the beta, I would just raise power to my Type 9's shields and muscle my way through the slot. If you do it gentle, then smaller ships just sort of get pinned to you and pushed back through the slot.

If you're more forceful, you would occasionally hear the gentle krump-boom of a sidewinder bouncing off your hull and exploding.

 

[RegisterMe]

A) 1,112 Cr$/t profit one way (supply and price have never changed, and there are two stations in the system with the same price, both of which are <50ls from the jump in).


16ly from


B) 1,144 Cr/t profit back. Supply, price, and demand status have changed here (it used to be a lot better), but I think it's floored, and if it isn't there's another commodity I can trade to A that effectively floors it at about 1,000 Cr/t. The station is <600ls from the jump in.


So at worst about 2,100 Cr$/t profit for a two jump, 16ly each way, round trip.


With a 116 tonne trading Asp I think I'm pulling ~250k a round trip (from which you need to subtract about 3k for fuel costs), I can do six trips an hour without trying to optimise.


Good point about the Orbis ports though (which one end is), they're a pain to dock with quickly.


It's mighty boring though. I would have spanked it harder only I stopped playing over the New Year with all the server fun and games (total net worth is just under 12 million so...).


As soon as I can afford the A5 FSD for my Asp I'm outta here .

EDIT: I've just replaced the BDS with a 4t cargo bay and can still make the jump with a C5 FSD.

 

[Sprax]

So guys pls check my maths here...

I have 100 tonne cargo hold

A 14.5 minute round trip gives me a profit of 233500cr

So per minute that's roughly 16103.50cr

So per hour that's 966206.90cr

So credit per hour per tonne is 9662.06???

I think this right?

Spraxy

 

[RegisterMe]

Looking at my example above, I can do six runs an hour, making Cr$ 250,000 per run. So that's Cr$ 1,500,000 per hour. I use 120 tonnes of cargo space to do it, so I am making 1,500,000 / 120 = 12,500 "credits per tonne hour".

In your example (rounding up your 14.5 minute round trip to 15 minutes) you can do four runs an hour, making Cr$ 233,500 per run. So that's Cr $934,000 per hour. You use 100 tonnes of cargo space to do it, so you're making 934,000 / 100 = Cr$ 9340 "credits per tonne hour".

 

[Yokai]

I find it useful to round UP my trip time to the nearest values : 12 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes. That gives me nice multipliers of 5x, 4x, and 3x.

Any more precision than that and you're splitting hairs needlessly. There is some variability in trip time from run to run. Do you get interdicted? Do you gel out coming in at max 0:07 speed for a moment and overshoot the ideal drop out window? Do you have an awkward approach to a dock one time?

Keep it simple: divide your total profit for a leg by the number of cargo slots you have. Add that value to a similar value for the other leg. round up your typical round trip time to the nearest useful multiplier as exemplified above. Multiply the total round trip profit per ton by that multiplier. Done.

 

[Vendraen]

Heya Yokai, I remember you from your TSW guides - they were excellent - as is this one. Except for... it gives the "whys" and "how to recognizes", but doesn't go into the "how to actually find the systems that give these routes."

Like, right now, I cannot find a "normal" trading route that beats the "buy at Lave, Leesti, Orrere, Uszaa, etc - fly to Fujin and sell, buy at Fujin, 39 Tauri, George Pants, Zeessze, and Altair, fly back to Lave sell, repeat" rares run. Like... not. even. remotely. close. So I would love to learn HOW to find such a route, and I haven't found a tutorial anywhere that really explains it. It's just not something I "get."

 

[Issmir]

No, not ever. I will never do this. I trade in open mode 100%. And I've never been attacked by a player, not once. Come on in and join me, the water's lovely.

Me neither.

Actually, that's not true. I bought a hauler and fitted it with a decent FSD and fuel scoop when I was off to try rares trading for the first time. Got interdicted then by a player who was very sad that I had nothing on me. that was about the 20th of December or so. Since then I've never been interdicted by a player. I now don't bother packing weapons or shields because the extra cargo space is simply more effective.

Admittedly, if I was hanging around the starter systems I probably WOULD be interdicted. And I did once see a bunch of players interdicting traders in the Altair system. but I had just gotten my asp, and even when I slowed down and wiggled a little to try and tempt them, they kept the other end of the system from me. If I flew towards them they scarpered. I felt like a kitten in a koi pond.

Honestly, I'd love to see some player pirates on my route. It'd give me a chance to take the Viper or Asp out for a spin, or talk some of my friends to patrol the route while I traded. And given the profits I've been making on bulk trading, losing a T7 full of cargo is more of an annoyance than a penalty.

 

[Viajero]

Great guide!

I personally dont use 3rd party trading tools at the moment as I find it much more rewarding to hunt for those 2,000 Cr/ton per return trip my self manually.

I would not say finding those manually is just sheer luck as you put it. Once you are a bit familiar and understand which commodities are typically produced at each type of economy then you can logically (i.e. not randomly) sweep nearby systems (1 or more jumps as needed) via "purchase explo and trade data" and/or actually visiting to check exact prices etc. You can see also main commodities traded and station/oupost distance to main star (which is key) aswell this way. For example, I typically discard any system whose nearest station/outpost is more than 3,000 Ls or so from hyperspace drop.

Having to actively look for HIGH supply and demand, compare to galactic averages and establish margins manually is indeed not trivial but fun.

I find that manually finding these "sweet spot" trade routes does not take as long as one might expect although it definitely adds to the overall time. And once you do is actually very rewarding since it forces you to use all the game tools available to establish them. This grinding I find actually worth playing.

I also always trade in OPEN. You can call this manual/OPEN way of doing it the Trading Iron Man if you want

If you really want to optimize time and be safe at all costs then obviously trading apps and SOLO mode are the way to go, but then you are firmly in cold/repetitive grinding territory.

Btw, another thing I am not sure you mentioned that is important to check for a stable route are the stock levels of the commodities you trade in. The largest the stock level (and demanded stock) the longer that trade route will remain stable in prices.

 

[Vendraen]

Still curious on this - I can't imagine "normal" commodity trading beating out a common rares run. Would love to learn how it's possible.