I went to the (soon to be obsolete) Galactic Hub capital (Lennon) to buy the Economy scanner from the blueprint trader. I'm playing around with a lot of the surrounding systems to try and understand how the new economy works. While the mechanics are still a bit lost on me, the range of prices from system to system can vary to an absolute insane amount.
I have a feeling that if you have a specific farm setup and manage to find a system which buys your product at a great percentage, you can absolutely get millions,if not tens of millions per hour. But the fact that no one has (as of yet) written an economy guide means we will be testing the waters for a while.
I've been testing the waters and mostly just trading all week, and I actually just finished a write-up on it.... I actually wrote it as a post here yesterday morning but before posting, I decided I should commentate over a gameplay example of it just in case anyone didn't want to read (I'm not really a streamer/guide guy though so the audio is poor just my headset) or to basically show with gameplay, too hehe. But I wrote it out first so I can post both :O
Basically it explains the new Trade System, how Economy/Wealth affect price/quantity, and also shows me making about 2.5 million in an hour with average mid-game inventory space.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnO8HVD6FnY
Farming is clearly better endgame but this new Trade System is a pretty good method as long as you got a half million to buy product with and at least a 20 slotter or so to store it in. Anyhow, full write-up below:
The basic idea is that each star system can sell new trade items at different prices and quantities, and that each time you sell an item, the price you receive decreases and does not easily return to normal. So you basically buy trade items cheap, and then regularly find new markets to sell those to at high prices.
The new Trade system mostly uses the 2 new characteristics added to Star Systems: Economy and Wealth Level. They both affect price and the latter also affects quantity.
Each star system can have 1 of 8 Economy Types. Each economy has Trade Items, which sell for a low price in that Economy a high price in a target market economy. These target markets split the 4 Economy Types into 2 cycles. One economic cycle is Mining, then Manufacturing, then High Tech, then Power Generation, the back to Mining. The other cycle is Trading, then Processing, then Research, and back to Trading. Each Economy Type has a few descriptions for it: for example, Mining, Ore Extraction, Minerals, and Prospecting are all the Mining Economy Type.
Each economy has a Wealth Level: poor, medium, and rich. Similar to Economies, each level has multiple descriptions for it: for example, Wealthy, Affluent, and Booming are all Rich Wealth Level.
There are a few factors that affect Trade prices and quantities.
Economy Type affects the price of Trade Items, which are new items which are purposefully for buying and selling and are primarily bought at space station trade terminals. Wealth Level also affects Trade Item prices. Each Wealth Level can have a High, Medium, or Low impact on price. High is roughly 15-20% percent, Medium is 10-15%, and Low is 5-10%. These are arranged unevenly: Rich Economies sell their in-supply Trade Items at a High discount but pay a Medium premium for their in-demand Trade Items. Its opposite is Medium Economies which conversely sell at Low discount but buy at a High premium – making them the best Medium Wealth the best target. Poor Economies sell and buy at Medium discounts and premiums.
Wealth Level also affects Trade Item prices as well as Item quantities. Rich Economies have hundreds of Trade Items and thousands of resource materials. Medium Wealth Economies have about a half or a third of that, and Poor Economies have often only a small fraction of what Rich Economies have.
The final factor that affects Trading is that when you sell an item, the price goes down. This is by far the most important characteristic of actually doing trading in-the-game. Once you understand the basic Trading system, most of your focus is going to be trying to find new Economies because once you sell a large amount of items in a star system, merchants will no longer pay you a profitable price – it'll crash lower than the price you paid for it in the in-supply Economy.
For example, Fusion Cores in Power Generation Economies can be bought for about 9500 units, and then sold in Mining Economies for about 11,500 units. But every 1 item you sell, the price goes down a static amount. For Fusion Cores, each time you 1 Fusion Core, the price you receive goes down by 30 units. I tested multiple trade items in multiple economies, and it was always the same static decrease. This means that after you sell a full Hauler ship load of 100 or so Fusion Cores, the price will crash from 11,600 to 8,600 – which is less than you paid for it. This decrease happens after each sale, so always always sell in large bulk, and sell a different item from your Exosuit inventory than from your Ship inventory.
What this means is that basically you can only do 1 run to each target market. Buying Trade Items never changes. The price you pay always stays the same. But you will need a new location every single time. But selling always causes prices to drop by the same amount, and it does not easily return to normal – I've tried many different things the last few days such as buying up everything, crash prices of every single target market, selling in over 10 different star systems and seeing if that triggers the first to reset, or even just the passage of time. Nothing has caused the prices to return to normal yet, so that's why you need to constantly find new target markets to sell to. I guess the developers didn't want players to just teleport between the same 4 star systems, and be forced to regularly fly to new systems.
There are two main methods you can do. The first is that you buy in 1 star system, and then after selling in new star systems of the same Economy Type, constantly teleport back to it to stock up again. For example, buy in a Rich Mining System, sell in any Industrial system, teleport back to the Rich Mining System and repeat. The advantage of using this method is that it's most cost efficient. Only Rich Economies have the cheapest buying prices and also large enough quantities of items to full a Hauler ship. So it maximizes your buy-side. Also, since you're not buying at the target market and don't need them to sell high quantities, it may be possible to maximize your sell price more often by opting for Medium Wealth Economies. The disadvantage is that it's less time efficient, and you cannot buy after you sell – you have to teleport back to your source.
The other method is to buy and sell sequentially through the economic cycle. For example, buy in Mining, sell in Industrial and then buy there, then sell in High Tech and also buy them, and repeat through the economic cycle.
The advantage of using this method is that it's more time efficient. You're able to sell and buy at each space station. The disadvantage is that it's more difficult to make cost efficient. You may have trouble consistently selling in Rich Economies, so that means when you buy new Trade Items there, they will be slightly more expensive and the quantity will be far too little to fill your Hauler ship.
This disadvantage however can be mitigated by ship upgrades: a stronger Warp Drive and an Economy Scanner will make it easier to only choose Rich Economies, though this means you'll be selling lower prices than the other method. But I believe that Medium Price/High Quantity is more efficient than High Price/Medium Quantity because the difference in price is marginal compared to the significant quantity differences. It's worth noting these ship upgrades also make the first method better since you can always choose Medium Economies to sell at then, but it improves the second method more IMO.
In theory, the second method is the most efficient if you can constantly find/warp to Rich economies, but in practice for many players this may be difficult until you get the Economy Scanner and perhaps a Warp Drive upgrade. I recommend the first method once you find your first Rich economy, and use it as your source to sell to target markets. Then, once you get those upgrades, try the second method.
BTW: One last thing I didn't really cover was to make it easier, spend 30 minutes ahead of time sitting in a Rich star system freighter, and craft yourself 10-20 Warp Cells. Rich system star stations can have over 6000 plutonium and freighters can have hundreds of thamium9. It makes Warp Cell crafting for quickly flying between systems so much easier than before.