Trading Guide?

[Edmond Rooke]

I have a passing interest in trading.  Is there a noob guide out there that covers basic concepts and terms?  Thank-you!

[xAzDKr]

http://www.navalactioncraft.com/this website makes crafting much easier

[Edmond Rooke]

Thank-you.  The Shop prices help.  I guess I just want to buy, transport and sell goods around the map... at amazing profits.  

[Sir Robert Calder]

I'm sure there are more detailed guides out there, but just to give you some quick pointers:

 

-Be ready to make a spreadsheet or at least have a notebook with you to take down notes. (I thought this would be an immediate turn off for me, but very few games outside of say Sid Meier's Pirates have little emphasis on trade without the hard stuff already being done for you.)

 

-Find a group of ports under your nation's control that are about 10-20 minutes in sail of each other.

 

-Take note of what resources they have and their buy/sell prices. Also take note of what port consumes/produces a type of good.

 

-Ports that consume a good and have very little stock of said good will usually give you a decent profit margin.

 

-You will get less of a profit as you continuously sell the same time of resource to the same town as you increase their stock by doing so, so don't overload on a resource that's only going to initially give you 20 gold profit per load as you'll quickly run that profit margin down to the red.

 

-Ports that are relatively untouched by players in the far corners of the map away from capitols usually have much more stable economies and thus offer more profitability from trade (and more profit margins for each type of good).

 

-Historical Artifacts will always net you a profit, provided you sell them in a town that consumes HAs.

 

-Just because you can make a profit doesn't always mean you should. If you're only making 3k-5k in gold for 15 to 20 minutes of sailing, while it IS a steady increase in income, you get 10k+XP for completely a single mission in a similar amount of time.

 

-Trader Snows have the biggest cargo hold.

 

-Trader Cutters are the most nimble/quick but have no guns.

 

-Don't be afraid to buy a resource for dirt cheap such as gold at a remote outpost by 3000+ units and then teleport back to your capitol to make an immediate profit if you'd planned to bring that trader ship back to the capitol anyhow.

 

-Make sure to set up your outposts near Free Towns surrounded by your nation's ports you want to trade out of. You never know when you could lose your faction's ports and all your goods inside them.

 

-Regional Capitols often act secondary to factional capitols in the sense that they consume many more resources and have more resources readily available to purchase.

[Edmond Rooke]

Thank-you, Captain.  Just the information I was looking for to get me started in trade.  Having an idea of gold per hour is helpful as well.  What are the "Regional Capitols"? 

[Capt. Rice]

good stuff here....

[Bramborough]

Nice info from Federico.  I think I'm getting the hang of basic trading, but am still trying to figure out best places to set up outposts.  Specifically, what types of towns.   I think I'd like to use Free Ports, so that I can use the delivery mechanic to move goods long distance.  The thing is, I know there's some fees for moving goods port-to-port like that, and I have absolutely no idea how much it'll cut into the profit margin.  Is this a viable practice in setting up a trade network?

 

For context:  PvE server, British (and one of the other problems with my idea is that there aren't any Free Ports very close to the Port Royal capital).  

[mathewblacks]

Thank for the topic. Great stuff here - really useful.