Building up our Colonies with Trade! - Starsector Realmbuilders Lets Play #7

In this series we are setting out to colonise the non-core worlds in a mega faction ready to face off against the core! And to do that we need a million credits of profit every single month! So lets get to it..
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[@l.d-b3465]

40:17 - Yes, that's what happens when most of your fleet is severely damaged. When you can't repair your fleet at a friendly port, it means you don't have enough supplies on hand TO repair them. It's a sign you need to buy more supplies, or mothball or suspend repairs for a few ships until you can buy more supplies. Also, when buying on the black market with your transponder on you should pay attention to your suspicion level as if it's high more patrols will try and stop you. If they find contraband, a thing that differs faction to faction, they'll confiscate it.

[@CommissarBRO]

You mention Riddick, and Warhammer 40k in the first 2 minutes. I'm sold.

[@dareonmograin5136]

Think about what kind of industry and what kind of planet has a place to BE, hint, habited planets are a bad place for heavy industry. here is an example of a list of industries for a habitable planet - farms, mining and, most importantly, light industry

[@icthulu]

Looking at the tragedy of that supply problem reminds me of that happening a couple times times to me too. Learned a valuable lesson, if you are running trading, make the fleet as small and fast as possible and keep capacity around 2-3,000. Large cargo space is best when you go out exploring because you will find more salvage than you can carry.

[@timothorgodofpunder8129]

Timo "I don't like pirates"! Meanwhile Freeports everywhere, and let's deal in arms, drugs and flesh!

[@mllhild]

You probably want some items for your colonies, so soon I guess its raid time. You can see if another colony has items if you visit them. Would also be a great justification to start a war.

[@TimoRedbeard]

Oooh, good shout on the raiding front.

[@roygray7666]

You’re going to give me liver failure with all the asteroids

[@aureliusagustinustansil8526]

On today's episode of spacecrime simulator, we started a human and drug trafficking syndicate while evading our rival pirate gang~ Btw I noticed that you are importing metals for your heavy industries, maybe it's time to get a refinery to smelt the ore your mines make into said metals, that would cut down on some expenses while also generates revenue

[@TimoRedbeard]

Refinery gets built very soon ;)

[@JohnDoe-sx6iw]

You can suspend repairs in the fleet menu with Q I believe.

[@EnablingBarley]

yep, but when your panicking you wont think of that.

[@ethansteffen7637]

The senate has an edict that will let you open commerce without scrapping an industry.

[@TimoRedbeard]

OOOOH, Great shout!

[@foxofblackdeath]

Timo, from what I've seen, if you take cargo from the "storage" section instead of the "resource stockpile" of your colonies it shouldn't cost anything.

[@TimoRedbeard]

Yeah absolutely correct! I just always forget to check my storage hahaha

[@mllhild]

when you have no supplies just mothball your whole fleet besides the largest tanker you have, sell the crew and then head home while praying you dont get attacked. Alternatively and maybe cheaper is to buy storage at the station and store all ships but your smallest. Store all that you have in fuel and crew. Now head to a large place, buy a cargo ship, fill it with supplies and head home. (look at market in the intel screen to figure out where you can get a lot supplies) This is one of the reason why a low volume frigate trading caravan is the best to make money. 3 frigate sized cargo ships optimized for speed and cargo are so much cheaper in terms of supplies that you can even fly strait throu the storms and dont even care. UAF Queens Dark Soul ship supremacy!!!

[@mllhild]

Oh, you also could have disabled repairs.

[@TimoRedbeard]

Yeah, figured this out by the end, you live and you learn eh? :D

[@mllhild]

Local storage means the player storage, so you are now having a rather useless pile of luxury good there waiting for you. The best VPC ships produce fuel and supplies at once. Those can make all your fleet upkeep cost vanish if you have a few of them.

[@TimoRedbeard]

Not useless! We can go trade it! :D But I get you, fuel/supplies is defo better.

[@mllhild]

Those large pirate fleets are what makes trading difficult in larger vessels because else you are forced to waste storypoints. To be able to always disengage fast frigate trading is best. Hence it all comes back to the Queens Black Soul ship, the Oncelot Explorer, but that would make this boringly easy afterall.

[@TimoRedbeard]

Yeah, toooo true, we'll have to fix up an actual trading fleet for when we want to go trading.

[@luechang9436]

So I noticed how sometimes you're confused on the market price when buying/selling. So when you buy stuff on the open market the price gradually goes up because their excessive supply dwindles, the same apply when you're selling on the open market, as demand are being met they'll pay you less. The way around that is to buy and sell on black market as price will stay the same until demand/excessive are matched. A example, you buy cheep drug in open market at 100 each, as you buy up the supply the overall price will raise up to 190 each instead of the original 100, the black market however will remain at 100 even if you buy the whole thing. When selling on black market that has a decifet they'll pay a flat premium until demand are met, then the price will shift. Black market makes alot of money at the price of losing relationships with factions while open market gives out moderate pay out but increases relation. Edit: I think it's cheaper to just buy a massive amount of supply then repair your ship on the dock then just floating in space while they're being repaired.

[@TimoRedbeard]

Less confused and more just figuring out the system, but I appreciate the info none the less! :D

[@CarlosEstebanLopezJaramillo]

It depends on the colony but on most commerce is worth it since it increases the brute income (income before expenses) for little upkeep as good as you can keep the stability above 5, any stability above 5 barely contributes to income, mostly to defences, which is why I enable free port & commerce, then disable free port as soon as a raid is announced to improve defense

[@sarathi02]

if you have the industrial revolution mod, i think that includes something called Void Extraction, which provides a bunch of different resources so you can remove farming/mining and just have the void extraction instead (if it balances to provide enough), you can use this to sometimes make colonies more efficient with their industry slots

[@sarathi02]

i say that, but it might be vanilla, i actually can't remember

[@TimoRedbeard]

Ooooh, I haven't seen anything Void Extraction related, but I'll keep an eye out, that sounds interesting!

[@CarlosEstebanLopezJaramillo]

@@sarathi02 Not vanilla, unless I somehow missed in my 15 colonies when building, and I sought to build every type of building, like the planetary shielding, so probably from a mod & probably not very balanced :)

[@sarathi02]

@@TimoRedbeard my mistake, it's actually from Legacy of Arkgneisis mod!

[@jasperavelis9678]

Suspending repairs will keep you from using up supplies in those instances.

[@jasperavelis9678]

Also, as mentioned by others, keep your fleet lean. Don't just fly around with a huge fleet for trading, if you do you will spend more on supplies and fuel than you make trading. PS the luxury good are dumped in storage.

[@breakallegro]

I think you should hit MORE asteroids...that should get you more angry comments and get this series the algorithmic lovin it truly deserves!! Keep up the great entertainment!!!!

[@TimoRedbeard]

HAHAHAHA. YESSSS.

[@roenrayn5637]

You need to pay more atencion wen buying suplies, i've noticed you bought then well above market prices, like 200 a piece wen they're like 100. Edit: also, fuel.

[@TimoRedbeard]

Sometimes I just understand that the convenience is worth the cost :D

[@roenrayn5637]

@@TimoRedbeard 🙃

[@mllhild]

Trading experience of Timo: how to bankrupt myself Total profit of today: - 500 000

[@TimoRedbeard]

HAHA! No I definitedly made money, I just spent it as fast on the colonies. ;) ;)

[@BackLaid]

Remember to take supplies, fuel and crew from the storage section of your colonies, before you take from the resource stockpile of your colonies. They refill over time. You are literally burning your credits for no reason, which while incredibly entertaining, seems like a poor business strategy.

[@TimoRedbeard]

Entertainment is my business strategy. Hahaha!

[@slyfoxkgar]

its cheaper to PAY to repair at a station than let it run out like that.. you need the Efficiency mod on every ship.

[@TimoRedbeard]

It wouldn't let me repair at station as I didn't have enough for a full repair :(

[@CarlosEstebanLopezJaramillo]

@@TimoRedbeard Pause repair on some ships, then full repair the rest

[@mathdarven5634]

So about that drug trading... I hear many people saying that drugs are the best to make cash in this game, and I strongly disagrees. Your only way to make easy money with it is by selling it to some pirate and pather markets that have a huge demand but not enough trade to support it. At least, that's how I feel about it. Heavy armaments always felt like it was the way to go though. Wait until there's a pirate raid on a system and checks what it consumes. More often than not, trade fleets won't be able to reach the planet reliably, creating a shortage in one commodity or the other. Then find any planet with a surplus, and exploit the shortage while it lasts. Heck, if you're trading on the open market, the faction owning it will like you more for helping to stabilize it. Alternatively, no trade fleet coming to the planet also means that they will start to get a huge surplus of the commodities they produce. Meaning you can buy them for a pitiful amount of money and sell it for loads of cash. Like a wise man once said, morality doesn't pay in this game. Opportunistic pragmatism does. That's why, sometimes (though not in this LP, doesn't fit with the overall anti-pirate mentality), helping a trade fleet to disappear is a nice way to make a profit. Space is a dangerous place, full of pirates and pathers... So many things can happen when a confident trader or a relief fleet commander in a hurry doesn't notice the fleet going closer to them in hyperspace with its transponder off. The nearest markets sometime hear the name of a ship in their last communication, but no conclusive evidence about the perpetrator of such attrocity. Which is good for us because we sold them the whole previous fleet cargo at two times the market price, and now they think we're an angel coming from the sky to save them from starvation!

[@CarlosEstebanLopezJaramillo]

Part of the reason your trades are not as profitable as you expect is the tarif of 18%, the unit price on the goods you see when selling is after tarifs have been subtracted, to break even you have to at least make 20% in profit, 40% if you buy & sell legal in planets without free ports or commissioned factions (the 4% extra accounts for travel expenses), best trades happen either on black markets or in free port planets where tarif drops from 18% to 8%, meaning legal trades break even at 20% (not exact math since distance, fleet size & speed affect how much travel expenses you have).

[@kurniawanhartonoherjana7923]

Timo, did your colony became trader? As long your colony planets keep steady rss and money with stronger fleet alongside with trader spaceship.

[@TimoRedbeard]

What do you mean, Colony become trader?

[@kurniawanhartonoherjana7923]

@@TimoRedbeard If your fleet need Cargo spaceship for trading.

[@CarlosEstebanLopezJaramillo]

@@kurniawanhartonoherjana7923 Can't make any sense of both your comments, you mean his fleet is missing a cargo ship? or the colonies fleets need cargo ships?

[@kurniawanhartonoherjana7923]

@@CarlosEstebanLopezJaramillo Cargo ships.

[@CarlosEstebanLopezJaramillo]

@@kurniawanhartonoherjana7923 Again which one needs cargo ships, his personal fleet or his colonies fleets? first you spoke about trading colonies, so I thought you mean to configure fleet doctrine with cargo ships, though not sure that helps at all with colony income...

[@slyfoxkgar]

56:41 you bought a LOT of the tran ore... they only wanted to buy 1000 at that high price.. says it right there in the F1 market menu.. (sorry the asteroid hits to your face are blinding you..) lol at least they still paid a LOT since you bought it so cheap.

[@TimoRedbeard]

Gota love buying cheap ;)

[@EnablingBarley]

O boy just think if you lost a Cainhurst now that would have been painful, glad it was just the troop transport only sad you lost the Elite Marines and the new 1 k crew you had bought.

[@budthespud3226]

Timo, you gotta stop hitting asteroids, my liver can't take much more of it.

[@TimoRedbeard]

If I stopped hitting asteroids you'd be like "Where are the asteroid impacts?! Fake video not made by Timo!"

[@anthonyle1838]

Shouldn't you get ground defenses

[@TimoRedbeard]

Probably 😂