Your local sector market may be accessed once you leave Imperial protection.
Other markets must be explored before you gain access.
The asset selectors on the left of the market display the best buy/sell price for each.
An indicator near the value indicates you have an offer for that asset.
Green indicates you offer the best price.
Red indicates there is a better offer than yours.
The market report is divided to two columns, buy offers and sell offers.
If you wish to buy an asset, you may either place a new buy offer or accept an existing sell offer.
If you wish to sell an asset, you may either place a new sell offer or accept an existing buy offer.
All offers are on the list including your own. This is so you may see the relative prices on offer.
It may initially be confusing as when you accept an offer you are doing the reverse trade.
ie; If you accept someones offer to sell, then you are buying.
Ships :
Placing a new sell offer :
Ships must be in market storage at the council star and not already offered for sale.
Ships may be damaged. The damage is seen by buyers.
Ships placed of sell offers will be deactivated.
Cancelling a sell offer will reactivate the ships, which takes 5 cycles.
Accepting a buy offer (selling your ships to an existing offer) :
Your ships must be in market storage at the council star and not already offered for sale.
Your ships must have zero damage.
Purchases :
Newly bought ships are placed in market storage.
They take 5 cycles to fully activate.
Activating ships may be placed on a new sell offer.
NOTE: Ships may only be removed from market storage if you have a fleet in local space at the star.
Placing Offers :
Offer quantities must be a multiple of 1000 for resources or 1 for other items.
Offers of officials are always for a specific official.
An offer is for a specific sector market (there is a market in each sector).
A commission is deducted at the time an offer is accepted (not when placed).
The commission is only charged to the realm accepting an offer.
Sell Offer :
When placed, the items will be shipped to the market star and put aside until a realm buys them.
The shipping cost (if any) is deducted when offer placed.
A domestic star or the council star itself must be selected as the origin of the items.
The items must be available at the selected star.
Cancel Sell Offer :
The items are returned to the origin star.
The items will be available once they arrive.
Trade Incentive :
An incentive to sell built assets via sell offers.
An incentive is possible for produced ships, crafted components,
assembled modules or trained officials.
When the sell offer is accepted you gain credits as follows.
Ships: 10% of production cost.
Modules: 10% of assembly cost.
Components: 25% of crafting cost.
Officials: 25% of the training cost.
No incentive is available for resources.
No incentive is available for assets you did not build.
No incentive is available when you sell to a buy offer.
If you purchase an asset,
all prior builds of that asset lose their pending incentive.
Buy Offer :
No funds are deducted when an offer is placed.
When the offer is accepted, the item and shipping cost will be removed from
the Trade Reserve, see below.
If the buy will use subsidy, the available subsidy will be reduced by that amount.
A specific star, either a domestic star or a council star itself
must be selected as the destination of the items.
If the selected star is a council seat, the items are placed there,
otherwise they will be automatically shipped
via UTS to the domestic star.
Ships may ony be purchased while a council seat is selected.
Trade Reserve:
A pool of credits reserved to cover purchases made via your buy offers.
When your buy offer is accepted, the item cost and shipping fees are deducted from
the reserve.
If the reserve lacks sufficient funds, the trade still completes and the
reserve enters deficit.
Trade reserve deficits incur 5% interest at the end of each cycle.
The maximum allowed deficit is 10,000 credits.
Buy offers that would exceed this limit are not shown on the market.
A reserve shortfall means there are more offers than the reserve can cover.
This is not a problem until some offers are accepted and the reserve goes into deficit.
The Trade Reserve is unaffected by your sell offers
or your acceptance of buy/sell offers.
Add to or remove credits from the reserve on the sector market page.
The trade reserve applies to all markets.
Accepting Offers :
Lords may accept an offer by selecting an existing offer.
Lords may partially or fully satisfy the offer.
Lords may not accept offers from lords that have embargoed them.
Selling :
When a lord sells, they are accepting someones offer to buy (in the wanted column).
The resources are removed from their stock and they receive the credits immediately.
A domestic star or the council star itself must be selected that has the resouces in stock.
Buying :
When a lord buys, they are accepting someones offer to sell (in the for sale column).
They pay the cost in credits immediately.
If the selected star is a domestic star the resources will be automatically shipped via UTS.
If the selected star is the council seat or the buy is ships, the items are placed there.
Costs :
Commission :
Applies to both sells and buys, but only to the realm accepting an offer.
Minimum commission is 100 credits.
The commission is paid at time of trade.
5% for trades below 10,000 credits.
4% for trades between 10,000 and 20,000 credits.
3% for trades above 20,000 credits.
Shipping :
Applies to both sells and buys.
Cost is per cycle (or portion) of shipping time.
5 credits per 1k cargo space.
or 15 credits per 5k cargo space.
Seller is charged for shipping from origin star to council star.
Buyer is charged for shipping from council star to destination star.
There is no shipping fees for bought or sold ships,
bought ships are always placed on the market storage fleet at the sector star.
Sell offer shipping fees are paid when offer is placed.
All other shipping fees are paid when a trade is made (offer accepted).
Escorts :
Not Applicable to placing sell offers or accepting a buy offer,
as the other party is responsible for the shipment.
When placing an offer to buy, and the escort option is selected, the number of escorts is
determined by the cargo space used.
1 UTS corvette is supplied for each multiple of 5K cargo space.
When accepting a sell offer (you are buying) you may choose the number of escorts.
Cost is 10 credits per corvette per cycle (or portion) of shipping time.
Paid at time of trade.
For high value shipments, it may be best to use the council star as the trade
destination and provide a domestic fleet for transport and protection.
Galactic Mean Cost (GMC) :
This value can be used to compare prices and profits of a specific item.
The forlmula used to calculate GMC is:
Credits
+ Build Hours X 50 (cost of 1 builder/hour)
+ Nanobits X .3
+ Workers or Crew (only for modules & ships)
These values may be adjusted on the Domain Page > Domain Configuration (scroll to bottom).
Value on Use (VOU) :
VOU is similar to GMC and used for components.
Credits are added to GMC per hour of saved time.
The default value is 10 Credits per hour.
This value may adjusted on the domain page as well.
Contracts :
Contracts may not be available until you explore some distance beyond your realm.
There are 2 types of contracts :
Tradegoods Contracts :
These contracts differ from Civil Goods Contracts in they do not need to be delivered
to a specific star.
When you load the contract, it converts to tradegoods (hard asset).
You must unload them at a domestic star to convert the tradegoods to credits.
Essentially these contracts are an agreement to buy the tradegoods at a specific star.
You pay for the TG, then go pick them up.
The expiry on these contracts is triggerred when it is acquired.
The contract must then be picked up (loaded on a fleet) before the expiry time.
If the contract expires, it becomes void and the investment is lost.
Civil Goods Contracts :
Goods contracts provide income for transporting "goods" from one star to another.
Contract goods are not a hard asset in the game, they are only used to facilitate the contract.
Contracts themselves exist in game as an asset that must be loaded at the origin star.
Contracts are available to those with trade access and have visited both origin and destination stars.
You may acquire a contract from the Contract Market found in the reports section.
To acquire the contract you must pay the Contract Value.
You must then get a fleet to the origin star and load the contract goods.
The owner of the origin star receives an excise tax of 5% of the Contract Value upon contract load.
Fulfill the contract by moving the fleet to the destination.
If you fulfill the contract by the delivery deadline,
you receive the Contract Value plus the On-Time Profit.
If the contract is late, you receive the Contract Value plus the Late Profit.
The owner of the destination star receives an excise tax of 10% of the Contract Value upon fulfillment.
Contract goods are automatically unloaded at the destination star when the fleet arrives.
You will receive an advisor alert when the shipment arrives.
If a fleet contains a goods contract, setting the fleet type to Trade,
will name the fleet with the contract destination.
Total Loss Contracts :
Total loss contracts are perishable goods shipments that result in no payout if late.
Warning : This means you do not get the original cost you paid returned and no profit is received!
If late, the owner of the destination star does not receive the 10% excise tax either.
These contracts are "bought" by the market not other players.
The credits gained will be 50% of the contract value.
Expired Total Loss contracts may not be sold.
Selling a contract may be used when you no longer have trade access to the destination star.
Essentially contract selling is a mechanism to dispose of contracts you will not deliver.
Contract Piracy :
Contracts may be captured, the captor may fulfill the contract or sell it.
Contract Viability :
A specific contract may not be viable for all lords.
Some of the variables are :
Can your ship deliver the goods in time? Some contracts may be possible for one lord and not another due to routing constraints.
Some will be impossible due to an unrealistic delivery time.
All will become more time constrained as the delivery time is based on the spawn time of the contract. So the longer you wait to acquire it the riskier it will be. Some may be viable to begin with and not several cycles later.
The excise taxes, paid to the owners of the origin and destination stars, may make the contract worthwhile for some lords and not others.
Each contract is on offer for a limited time, after which the offer is withdrawn.
If the contract remains un-acquired, the profit level will increase at various intervals. So an undesirable contract could be more desirable a few cycles later
Trade Agreements (TA):
Trade agreements are between realms (players) see treaties for trade with Indies.
A TA automatically converts Factory Output (FO) into credits.
TA are created by making a proposal and it being accepted.
You may have more than one TA with each realm.
Your FO on an agreement does not automatically gain you anything, they are used to give value to the recipient in exchange for something.
The recipient gains the value of your FO times the amount on the agreement.
See the "Trade Values" report for the value of FO's.
ie; You send 100 FO worth 1.55 for 10 cycles
The recipient gains 155 credits each cycle for 10 cycles.
100 of your FO's are used up each cycle.
Each cycle, income is received (see Trade Agreements in economic report)
and a shipment of tradegoods is sent to the capital via UTS.
If this shipment is captured (Interdicted) loss of income will occur, see interdiction.
While a proposal is pending, the value of the FO may change to the current value.
Declaring war automatically cancels all TA with the opponent.
Trade Agreements vs UTS Shipment of Tradegoods TG/FO :
Trade Agreement :
The value of the FO is recieved when the shipment is sent (each cycle).
The destination of the shipment is always the capital.
If the shipment is interdicted, the value is deducted from credits available.
UTS shipment :
The TG are not converted to credits until they arrive at the destination.
The destination may be any star contiguouswith the capital.
If the shipment is interdicted, the TG are lost and conversion never happens.
Trade Penalties :
If factories are demolished, there may be more FO's on TA's than are produced.
In this situation a trade penalty will show in the economic report.
The penalty is your highest export value plus 10% times the amount of over trade.
Reduce the TA to stop the penalties.
Embargo :
An embargo will prevent the embargoed party from gaining income from TA,
but the amount of FO in the TA remains allocated and may not be used for other TA.
Interdiction :
Trade interdiction may affect Trade Agreements.
Interdiction occurs when the UTS fleet with the tradegoods is captured.
This results in a non-budgetary expense seen as Trade Interdiction on the economic report.
The value of the interdiction is equal to the income received when the shipment was sent.
Trade Routes :
These are paths taken by UTS to deliver TG from a trade agreement.
Trade routes are determined by the UTS Corp.
These may be via stars that are restricted to you.
Realm access restrictions do not apply to UTS shipments.
You may lock stars from being used by trade routes, see top of routes panel.
Hot key "W" will display incoming trade routes on the map.
The wider the lane, the more shipments.
A new trade agreement will not show until after the first shipment is sent (at CE).
Trade routes will disappear once all shipments using that route are completed.
You may see several trade route from a single realm.
This will be due to a change in star status, like a jumpgate or lock change.