Trade Shuttle

The shuttle visits the stations it can trade with at the destination, one at a time. Each stop has two steps.

First it sells the cargo picked for that station. Each item is sold at one station only, and the sale earns trade points and reputation with that station's faction.

Then it buys goods with all your points with that faction, including points you had before the trip. It keeps buying until the points run out or nothing affordable fits in the hold.

Cargo no station wants is sold cheaply at the end and destroyed, and that station then buys again. Anything left in the hold comes home with the purchases.

Which station gets each item, and the order of the stops, is explained under Advanced.

Barter

Sells each item at its best price and buys with your points. Barter skips stations of your proxy faction.

Reputation

Needs cargo in the hold. Sends each item to the faction with your lowest reputation among those that take it. Pays half the points, or three quarters with Bill of Lading and Warehouse Network. It still buys goods, and barter categories do not apply.

Freighter

Needs a proxy faction with stations at the destination. Takes their goods for free, highest world price first, with no points or reputation involved.

A station pays a share of its own price. Its price is higher when it is short of that item, and your share grows with reputation, from 25% at reputation 0 to 50% at 100.

Goods no station wants sell for 20% of world price, or up to 60% with perks.

Selling at a station by hand gives no reputation, so shuttle sales are a way to raise it.

The shuttle buys one unit at a time and picks the best value for money: world price divided by what the station asks.

There is no purchase limit. It keeps buying until that faction's points run out or nothing affordable fits. Points only spend at their own faction's stations, and leftovers stay with that faction.

A barter category tells it to spend part of the money on that category first. You cannot ask it for one item.

Any planet or moon with a station the chosen mode can use, except the one your Magnum is at. Each moon is its own destination, apart from its planet, and only stations at that planet or moon take part.

It trades with factions at reputation -35 and up, or with any faction once you own Contraband. A mission on a station or the lock after a capture does not stop it.

It cannot launch while your Magnum is travelling or inside a bramfatura.

Choose Barter with the Chips category. The shuttle then spends part of your points on chips first. Without it, chips usually lose to cheap goods on value for money.

Stations start with no chips, and no station makes them. Every two weeks a random quarter of all stations each receive 5 items, and a few of those are chips. Nothing uses chips up, so they pile up where nobody has bought them. Big hubs like Ceres, Earth, Mars and Jupiter collect the most.

For the load, bring goods the stations there buy. Goods nobody there wants sell for little and take up cells until the very end. Leave some cells empty. With Chips chosen, stations that have chips take their turn first, so the empty cells go to them.

A very valuable load can backfire. After buying chips, a station spends the rest of that faction's points on anything, and those goods can fill the hold before the next station.

Freighter takes chips for free where you hold a proxy, but it fills the hold with the most expensive goods first.

Checking for chips

You can check before you launch. Put goods the stations there buy in the hold. On the starmap, select the planet or moon, choose Barter and note the Profit figure with the category set to None. Then switch the category to Chips.

If Profit changes, up or down, at least one station there has chips in stock. With no chips anywhere, both settings run the same trip and show the same number. A change does not promise that this load buys any, since it may not earn enough points with the factions that have them.

If Profit stays the same, the check tells you nothing. The figure only counts points this load earns, so try more cargo or goods that sell to other factions there. An empty hold always shows 0%.

Route Beacons

Trip 2 days shorter

Navigation AI

Trip 5 days shorter

Dense stacking

Hold gains 2 rows, 12 cells

Contraband

Reaches any faction whatever its reputation

Charisma training

Sales raise reputation twice as fast

Bill of Lading

Sales raise reputation 15% faster, and goods nobody wants pay 15% more

Warehouse Network

Sales raise reputation 35% faster, and goods nobody wants pay 35% more

Bargain lessons

Goods nobody wants pay 40% of world price, up from 20%

Bill of Lading and Warehouse Network add no trade points on ordinary Barter sales.

Trade points you already hold with a faction get spent when the shuttle stops at that faction's stations, as long as the hold has room. If you are saving points with a faction, send the shuttle to a planet or moon where it has no stations.

Having fewer points with a faction can be beneficial, as the hold does not get filled at the first station of that faction. So managing your trade points is important.

A station's price starts from the item's world price. Goods the station uses are priced by how much it has in stock against its monthly use. Goods it makes are priced at half of world price, and its rotating extra item stays at world price.

Stock is counted unit by unit, so a large stack gets cheaper as it sells.

Your reputation with the owner sets how much of that price you get or pay.

Trade points earned scale with the difficulty's barter value: 125% on Normal, 100% on Hard, 75% on Unfair.

With all perks, goods no station wants pay 60% of world price, which is more than a saturated station pays at any reputation.

The shuttle sets the order of the stops at launch, before it sells anything. It takes two steps.

Step 1. In Barter, each item goes to the station that pays the most for it, and every stack of that item goes there too. Stations that get items come first, the biggest sale first. The rest follow.

Step 2, only with a barter category. The stations are sorted again by their best deal in that category, even one you cannot afford. Stations with nothing from the category go to the back. When two stations have the same best item at the same price, the order from step 1 decides.

Tip. To move a station earlier, load an item only that station buys. With a category, this only puts it ahead of stations with the same best deal.

Two stations of one faction share one balance, so the first one spends the points.

Cargo no station wants is sold at the very end to one station, which then buys again. Barter picks the faction you have the highest reputation with, and Reputation mode the lowest.

A free item comes first. After that the highest world price divided by buy price wins. Ties go to the largest saving, then the fewest new cells, then the highest world price, then the lowest buy price.

The shuttle looks again after every unit, because the last purchase can change the price.

It buys from any stock, including what the station needs for its own production. Items you just sold reach the stock after the buying is done, so you cannot buy them back on that visit.

A barter category sets aside 60% of the trip's money for that category: your points with every faction there, plus what this trip's sales will earn. At each station the shuttle first spends from that share on the category, then spends the rest of that faction's points on anything.

So a deal is a preference and sets no limit. To spend a given amount on the category, bring about 1.7 times as much.

None sets aside nothing and leaves the stops in their usual order.

An item's own category is usually its best deal and not always, because the deal also orders the stops and decides what spends points and cells first. The calculator tries every deal for each system.

The shuttle only reaches an item once everything with better value at that station is bought or too expensive for the points left. If those better goods fill the hold first, the item never comes up.

Getting one item can also cost more than its price, because goods ahead of it need points of their own.

Freighter ignores value for money, so it can bring home what Barter cannot where you hold a proxy. Buying by hand at the station also works, at reputation 0 and up.

A stack holds its cells until the shuttle reaches the station that buys it. Earlier stops can only fill what is free, so several small stacks can keep them from filling the hold before the stop you came for. Goods no station wants hold their cells until the very end.

Each stack raises reputation in turn, which moves the prices of everything after it. One stack more or less can change what a station buys first, and a bigger load can bring home less.

Sales run in the order the items went into the hold, whatever their position on the grid, until the sort button rearranges them. Sorting also merges stacks of one item.

In Barter, every sale raises your reputation with the faction that buys. You gain 1% of the sale's points, counted with the value perks. Charisma training makes it 2%. The value perks raise reputation here and add no trade points.

With all perks, a sale for 727 points gives 21.8 reputation. With none it gives 7.27.

Reputation mode pays out half the points and turns the other half into reputation at 1%. Without Charisma training that is the same reputation as Barter, and with it a quarter less. What the mode changes is who gets it: each item goes to the faction you have the lowest reputation with among those that buy it.

Raising a faction at -100

At -100 a faction's stations pay nothing for your goods, so selling to them gives no reputation. Goods that no station at the destination buys work differently. The shuttle sells them for a share of world price that ignores reputation and destroys them. In Reputation mode, that sale goes to the faction you have the lowest reputation with there.

To use it, buy Contraband first, because without it the shuttle skips factions below -35. Pick a destination where the faction has a station and is your lowest reputation there. Fill the hold with goods none of the stations there buy, and set the mode to Reputation.

With all perks, unwanted goods that sell for 600 give that faction 9 reputation and 300 trade points. The calculator's Reputation mode finds these loads for you.

Freighter uses only your proxy faction's stations at the destination. Cargo already aboard stays there, so unload first for the most room.

It has no category, so expensive weapons and augments can crowd out what you came for.

It empties production inputs too, and a station short of inputs runs its recipes at one third speed.

Cells are counted per item across stations, but each station hands over its own stacks. When one item comes from two stations, the goods can need more cells than were free, and whatever does not fit is lost.

Reputation mode also visits proxy stations, where everything is priced at 0. They pay nothing for cargo and give their stock for free. Capturing a faction sets its reputation to 100, so cargo rarely goes there.

Profit is the world value coming home as a percentage of the cargo's world value. It leaves out your stored points, so a real trip can return more.

It also keeps counting sold items against the hold at later stops, so it can fill the hold sooner than the real trip.

It can also tell you whether chips are there, see Getting chips.