#1

Some newbie trading tips I found:

Buy the trading extension for your freighter at one of the argon equipment docks. This should allow you to view the prices of factories without docking if your in the same sector.

Once you have that you can select a factory from the sector view (press M whilst in space). Then press I to bring up its details without docking. The teladia sell a best buys and best sell equipment that gives you lists of bargains and average prices that you can use too.

You will see a primary produce, how much is in stock and the price of goods per unit.

The more stock a factory has, the cheaper its price will be and better your profits when you try and sell it. If a factory is half full of its primary product then the chances are its price will be average and it will be hard to sell at a profit. This is a general rule of thumb you can use right away, it is true most of the time.


Now before you buy up any goods, check if you can find a factory that wants that product. Do this using the sector view (M) and select each factory in turn. Look at their resources NOT their products. Resources are used up to make their product, that is what the factory demands and what you supply.

If the goods you want are listed in the resources and the price they will pay is higher than the price the other factory is selling at then you have found your first tradable goods and will make a profit by buying at the first factory and selling at the other. But remember, be fast because other traders are looking to make a good deal too and may beat you to it.

In time you will start to remember what prices are always good to buy at and what prices are always good to sell at.

The early game is about trading and this info is basic foundation of all trading you do in the game. When you get your first factory, this info becomes vitally important if you want to be able to sell goods from your factory.

So the first step in the X-universe is learning the prices of goods and how trade them. After that it should all start to fall into place because the money you earn will allow you to buy bigger and better toys to play with and you will see the mid and late game changes how you play completely has manual trading gives way to factory ownership and eventually owning and supplying an entire fleet of your own.

#2

I just uploaded a decent X3 universe map that I found here

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#3

Nice one, that will come in handy harry.

#4

Tip for picking up bits of crap left over after a fight

- Press ‘O’ to open the cargo hold. Ensure there are not bad guys around as your shield is lowered whilst the hold is open.

- Fly to the piece of floating crap and in it goes.

#5

Tip for viewing factory prices in other sectors:

You can only see real time data of factories in a zone in which you have a presence (i.e. you have a ship in the area). All other data for the area is a snap shot of the last time you were there. To spot opportunities you need real time data in each sector:

- Find a nav sat factory and buy a few.

- Fly to a sector then head out into the wilderness. The satellites get picked off by various nasty people so sticking it out in the middle of nowhere increases its survivability.

- When you have found the satellites home open the cargo hold (default ‘O’) and eject it from the hold via the ship menu.

- You can pick it up again in the same way you pick up other bit of floating crap (open cargo bay – fly at it).

#6

Changing between ships:

If you start on easy you get a fighter and a freighter. When you start you are in a nice safe area so you can take direct control of the freighter to get the hang of the trade aspect. There are two ways to change between ships:

1) Jump out and jump in - This involves bailing from one ship in the middle of space and floating in a badly animated space suit to the other ship:

- Fly to the ship you wish to transfer to (it goes without saying that you must own it).

- Press SHIFT + e to leave the ship. Deepening on your settings there may be a confirmation that you do in fact want to jump out of your ship.

- Fly your little chap (in my case wing commander fanny flaps) to within 30m of the new ship.

- Press SHIFT + e again to get in.

- Yay! No spin your ship round a select the previous ship with the mouse. There will be a quick access icon with ‘Follow me’, hit that bitch and the other ship will…….follow you. If you don’t tell it to move it will just sit there and get bum plundered by anyone that happens past it.

2) The civilised station docking method – This involves docking two ships at a station and walking from one to the other.

- Fly your ship to a station and instruct the other ship to meet you at that station.

- From the option in the space station menu you can transfer to the other ship.

- Done.

#7

I found that before you can do any trading that is even vaguely worthwhile, you need to do the following ground work:

- Locate the navigation satellite factory in Argon Prime.

- By some of the basic satellites

Note: If they are none then look at the primary resources for the factory, if they have zero stock of something then they cannot produce the satellites. In this case have a look around for the bits they need and supply it to the station. For reference:

Energy Cells – Ore Belt
Majaglit – Not sure yet but apparently Paranid space is the place to get this shit
Silicon Wafers – Herron Nebular

- Leave the fighter dock at the factory and do some cash ruins with the old clunker.

- Check back periodically with the fighter (access it using the ‘r’ key to bring up the ‘my property’ menu). As soon as sats are made, snap them up.

- When the fighter has about 10 sats on board , transfer over to it. At this point you may want to start doing some manual trading with the freighter to keep the money coming in.

Note: This will become MUCH easier once the sats are in place.

- Jump to a sector you have explored. When you arrive, fly to the edge of the map away from all the ships / stations as much as possible.

- Press ‘y’ to open the ship menu then press the ‘Open bay’ button (or just press ‘o’).

- Press ‘y’ to open the ship menu then press the ‘Freight’ button (or just press ‘f’). From this menu select the nav sat then press eject. For fuck sake make sure you only have ONE selected before you eject it, otherwise you then have to hunt down 9 of the bleeders before you move on.

- Repeat in each sector this until you run out of sats.

- Now when you got to the galactic map (‘,’ key) you can select a sector with a sat in it, then click on each factory in turn and press the ‘u’ key to view what they need and how much they are buying it for.

- After a bit of pissing about you will spot a gap in the market, then somewhere that sells the stuff they want cheap, then you make money.

#8

Types of freight:

A question posed by Greg-u-larse prompted me to find out what the letters relating to the stuff sold in stations means.

It turns out that the letter refers to the size of container that the commodity is supplied in i.e.
S = Small
L = Large
XL = Extra large (should that not be EL then??)
ST = Station Sized or a type of Ford Focus

Certain ships can only hold up to a certain size of cargo, for example:

- The brick station sells a primary brick commodity of Yak in XL sized bra containers.

- A fighter with a maximum fright hold of (L) large cannot fit the Yak in itself so the commodity is red.

- A freighter with a maximum fright hold of (XL) Extra Large can fit some Yak in itself so the commodity is white and a set amount of yak / bras can be brought.

#9

Most of the bewildering abbreviations used in the game can be found in this link.

Last edited 23 Aug 2013 at 11:12.