Trade

Trade view

Trade allows the player to increase the empire revenue through Exportation of goods from a planet.

To start the Exportation of goods in a planet a Civilian Station is required. These stations when built start with one docking space which can accommodate one small freighter and move one unit of "Goods".

On the picture to the right you can see a planet called "Blake". That planet has a Civilian Station built in it just like "Bismol" and "Serenity". The planet "Marshak" on the other hand, doesn't have a station as it can be seen through the different icons that represent each planet. These three planets can export goods because they have a Civilian Station on them but the last one can only receive importation from other planets.

How it works

The interface

The interface is quite simple. To enable trading, first select a planet and move the slider of the Industrial Output towards Trade. Looking to the planet the player can see the "Goods" circles filling up, this means that the trade route is activated and the "Good" is being transported by a freighter.

The open triangles on the freighters line represent a open dock space at the Civilian Station and when that triangle is filled up, it means that a freighter is allocated to the slot. Income is generated by exporting goods from a planet. "Goods" are essentially trade lines, for each 200.000.000 population one "Good" is created and when moved inside the empire, it has a value of 10000 credits.

Freighters

Freighters are required to move the goods and generate income. To move one "good", a small freighter is needed. Large freighters can move two "goods" and therefore they double the income - since small freighters and large freighters have the same upkeep, the use of large freighters could be profitable on the long run. Both small and large freighters take one Dock Slot.

There are two ways to obtain freighters to work your trade routes. The first way is to build them like any other ship. These freighters can be moved from system to system by selecting "Relocate", then selecting "Reserve Transfer" and finally adding all the freighters you wish to move from the original system to the convoy fleet. The second way to obtain freighters is to invest part of your income in Trade Stimulus in the budget management screen. This will cause civilian interests to periodically construct freighters to fill open trade routes. Freighters obtained in this fashion cannot be moved or scuttled but have the benefit of not incurring an upkeep cost. Once all trade routes are filled you can drop Trade Stimulus down to zero until more freighters are needed.

Q-Ships

When you start to get into trade you will eventually start to encounter Pirates. These consist of medium size fleets of ships(Cruisers). Mostly composed of ships from different races in the galaxy. Most of the time you won't be able to combat them with your main fleets. So you would have to make Q-ships. Q-ships are what the name says it is. These ships are combat ships disguised as freighters. Pirates usually attack with boarding pods so equipping these with PD's (Phalanx PD) for destroying the pods and a heavy/medium weapon for attack the pirate ships should make a decent Q-ship.

Imports

Imports represent the number of tradelanes in range from other planets.

The Value of Trade Lines/Goods

There are three different types of trade lines or three different values for goods dependent on where they are moved.

1. Internal - this is a trade line inside a province and it has a value of 10000 credits.
2. Provincial - this trade line has the value of 20000 credits and is applied to lines between provincies.
3. Inter-Empire - this trade line is the most profitable of them all, it has the value of 50000 credits for each moved good and as the name suggests its for trade between empires.

Trade Bonus

Trade can receive bonus from certain modules built on civilian and diplomatic stations. Civilian Stations Bonus These bonuses are applied only to the outgoing trade lines. The modules that give bonus are:

• Habitation - 1% bonus to internal trade lines
• Large Habitation - 5% bonus to internal trade lines
• Alien Habitats - 2% bonus to inter-empire trade
• Large Alien Habitats - 5% bonus to inter-empire trade

Diplomatic Stations Bonus

On these stations, there is only one module that provides a bonus to trade and it is the Customs Module. This module applies a 1% bonus to all Incoming and Outgoing trade lines in a system.

These bonuses are calculated for each constructed module and applied to each trade line.