Economics of Commodity Trading

This section was inspired by a prior economy team spectrum post for update 4.5, which can be found in its original form here. From the best I can tell, most of it is still accurate in the current version, but efforts were made to generalize this page since everything (especially the specific numbers) in the original post is subject to change.

Disclaimer: It’s a sandbox, so almost every “rule” has at least 1 exception. CIG's systems prefer rubber bands to hard boundaries.

Not all commodities are created equal...

CIG has separated various commodities into "Brackets". These are back-end groups of commodities that help CIG's economy team reinforce the rarity, volume, and supply of resources throughout the 'verse. For example, something that's easy to mine in a large volume like Copper will be in a larger bracket (more abundant) than Gold, which is rarer and harder to find. Sensibly, resources that are in smaller brackets (rarer) will be restocked by trading locations more slowly and have lower limits to their stocks.

For now, the simplest way to differentiate brackets for traders is by the maximum crate size purchasable. To help, here’s some insight on the brackets that CIG provided during the 4.5 PTU cycle:

Max Purchasable Crate Size | Example of a good ship to trade these | Examples of Competitive Goods | Example of Casual Goods

• ​[Bracket 2] 2 SCU Crates | Clipper (12 SCU) | Diamond-Laminate, Partillium | AV Equipment, Slam

• [Bracket 8] 8 SCU Crates | Cutlass Black (46 SCU) | Dymantium, Fresh Food | Organimass, Iodine

• [Bracket 16]: 16 SCU Crates | Starlancer Max (224 SCU) | Gold, Bioplastic | Scrap, Astatine

• [Bracket 24/32]: 24 or 32 SCU Crates | Caterpillar (576 SCU) or larger | Steel, Tungsten, Pressurized Ice | Helium, Mercury, Silicon

​ Keep in mind that the commodities within each bracket still have a good deal of variance in how competitive vs casual they are:

• Competitive goods have lower supply, higher demand (Pirate Bait)

• Casual goods have higher supply, lower demand

All goods can still make profits when traded.

Ship Size vs Effort vs Crew Count

Being a sandbox game, SC allows you to do a *lot* given you have the time, energy, and audacity to try it. Nothing prevents you from slowly stockpiling the most valuable resources to then trade them all at once, but that will make you a more appealing target for pirates and take you dramatically longer to achieve your goals. So, speaking generally:

Smaller bracket commodities are meant for smaller ships

Larger bracket commodities are meant for larger ships

If you're a solo trader, you probably won't make a lot of money trying to trade smaller bracket goods in larger ships given:

• How long it would take you to load and unload the smaller crates (filling a Cat with 1 or 2 SCU crates?)

• How difficult it would be to acquire the volume you would need to fill your ship (individual shops will have less SCU available for purchase)

• How much faster you could trade larger bracket goods (for a higher aUEC/hr)​

So... How can you optimize your cargo runs?

Trade the right commodities for the ship you're using!

• A Caterpillar full of Pressurized Ice(32) has the ability to make around 20% more per trip than a Starlancer Max full of bioplastic(16). This, in turn, is about 20% more than a Cutlass black full of Fresh Food(8), and so on.

• No matter how efficiently you trade, there’s a cap on how much you can make trading 8s in the appropriate size ship. If you jump from 8 to 16, you will make more profit running 16s in ships appropriate to that size.

OR - Bring extra crew!

• CIG “restricts” brackets by making it more dangerous and slower to trade at a smaller bracket good in bigger ships. Those restrictions can be mitigated by simply having a bigger crew!

• If you have enough people to load a Starlancer Max with bracket 2 goods efficiently, go for it! Of course, you might need to get a variety of bracket 2 goods depending on how much the location supplies.

• Keep in mind your ship will also end up have a lot of value concentrated in one point…

How does dynamic pricing of commodities apply

In your Mobiglass Journal, you can find trading alerts offering discounts on purchasing, or premiums on selling! (You should probably read the trade tutorial in the journal in game too).

Prices most shops are currently "semi-dynamic". For instance:

• If a location offers or requests Gold at a Discount of 10% or a Premium of 10%. Those premiums and discounts trends towards 0 the more players buy or sell it there (server hopping will not change that).

• If the "BEST" bracket 8 commodity has a base value of 1000 aUEC and currently has a 25% selling premium, and the "second best" bracket 8 commodity has a base value of 975 aUEC and also has a 25% selling premium currently, THEN: as soon as enough players have reduced the "best" commodity's selling premium by 10% then it's actually no longer the "best" option.

• This means that whatever the most players are buying and selling will usually be *not* the best thing to trade and sell. This creates a meta in the trading loop of trying to outpace the other traders in the 'verse!