Trade
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Colonies can trade with other factions by using caravans and orbital trade ships via a comms console. Tradeable commodities include slaves/prisoners, furniture, gear, resources, food, drugs, and works of art.
The trade interface shows what commodities are available to trade, the colony's stock, the trader's stock, and the prices to buy and sell.
| BUY | QUANTITY | SELL | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ALL | ONE | positive = buy negative = sell |
ONE | ALL |
| << | < | may type # here | > | >> |
- Trade is influenced by your trader's ability to speak and hear. Damage to any such parts will ruin trade prices.
- Prices listed in green are cheap (does not appear with base-game traders), while prices listed in red are expensive.
- Items that the foreign trader has no interest in are shown grayed out at the bottom of the list; other traders may want them instead.
- Animals that have been downed (whether due to starvation or injury) are not listed for trade.
- All traders carry a limited amount of silver, so they may not be able to buy everything you wish to sell. You can still give them things but everything they receive will be for free, as they cannot afford to pay.
- Selling a prisoner is profitable, but has a negative impact on the happiness of all colonists (excludes psychopaths).
Early Game Trading
Caravans consist of one or more faction members often with pack animals and/or tamed animals in tow. Players can either form their own caravan or wait for others to visit their own colony. To trade with a foreign passing caravan, direct a colonist (preferably with high social skill as he/she can get better prices) to speak with the caravan member who has a yellow question mark above the head. Stored items will be eligible to sell and appear in the trade window. Purchased items will be dropped in the location where the trader was standing and will need to be hauled.
Sometimes, foreign caravan members may fight each other and accidentally drop items from their gear inventory.
Later Game Trading
After finishing the required research, a comms console and an orbital trade beacon can be built, which allow:
- Satellite calls to request caravans to friendly faction at the costs of 1100 silver, which can be reduced to 700 silver if goodwill is above 40. You can only call for a caravan from a given friendly faction once every four days.
- Interaction with orbital trade ships which will stay around for a limited time. A blue notification will appear at the right of your screen to announce the trade ship and its type. After it's gone, a simple notice at the top of the screen will note when the same vessel leaves comms range and can no longer be traded with. Each trade ship varies in type, which determines its inventory.
To trade, order a colonist to interact with the comms console. Only items located within range of an orbital trade beacon can be traded. Purchases will be sent via drop pods to a beacon's open-air tiles, drop pods will phase through constructed roofs otherwise. If all beacon tiles are covered, drop pods will land at the nearest eligible tile. Colonists with a higher social skill using the comms console will negotiate lower buying prices for everything but the commodities (1.5% per social skill point). Likewise, colonists with a higher social skill will negotiate for higher selling prices for everything but the commodities (1.5% per social skill point). Prisoners can be sold directly from their cell even if not in range of a beacon and tamed animals can be sold from anywhere on the map. The trade value of a prisoner or animal is based on their capabilities, injuries and skills.
Trade Prices
Hovering over an item's price opens a tooltip that displays price modifiers.
Usually, goods from the colony are sold at 50% market value, and bought at 150% market value.
Certain difficulty levels modify trade prices. See Challenge Scale.
Trade prices may also be modified by the Trade Price Improvement stat of chosen colonist, listed on the tooltip as "Your negotiator bonus: -x%".
Some traders will charge 2x the price of a good, in addition to the 150% multiplier on buying. Selling remains at normal price.
Faction bases don't have any goods-specific price penalties and will even offer a 2% discount when trading at a base.
Types of Traders
Land Convoy
- Visitors are small groups that carry all of their goods on their person. They may or may not have items for trade; even if they do, they often have few items and little silver to trade with.
- Trade caravans are large groups that carry their goods on pack muffalo or dromedaries, depending on climate. They have a moderate amount of items and silver to buy trade with.
Land convoys will leave the area if the temperature is deemed too dangerous for them to continue trading.
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Technological Level
- Neolithic traders are tribal in nature and will be limited to selling neolithic level items.
- Outlander traders come from other faction settlements and are not restricted to a specific technology level of items.
Faction Bases
Large faction settlements that engage in trading. They buy/sell everything within their technology level, have the most extensive stocks and offer a 2% discount.
Physical presence
- Outlander traders have a physical presence on the map and offer a small to medium amount of items and silver.
- Orbital traders have no physical presence. They have large amounts of items and silver to trade with, and have the same trader types as outlanders.
While the game does not specify where orbital traders hail from, the technologically advanced nature of items that they carry generally indicates that they are from midworlds, urbworlds or glitterworlds.
By inventory
Bulk goods trader
Bulk goods traders deal in food and basic materials, such as steel, wood, components, gold, textiles, as well as clothing, furniture and domesticated animals.
Combat supplier
Combat suppliers deal in weapons, armor, mortar shells, and medicine.
The tribal variant of this is the War merchant.
Exotic Goods Trader
Exotic Goods Traders deal in rare and valuable items such as artifacts, televisions, telescopes, apparel, bionic body parts, neurotrainers, some furniture, plasteel, gold, uranium, and glitterworld medicine. The may also carry animals of the wilder variety.
The tribal variant of this is the Shaman merchant.
Pirate Merchant
Pirate Merchants and its derivatives deal in slaves/prisoners, weapons, body parts, medicine, and drugs. The chance of traders carrying prisoners should go down as colony population goes up.
The tribal variant of this is the Slaver.
Trader inventories
Orbital
Orbital traders usually come with large stocks corresponding to their trader type.
Orbital bulk goods trader
| Name | Price | Min Stock | Max Stock | Avg Stock |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Silver | N/A | 4000 | 6000 | 5000 |
| Component | normal | 5 | 30 | 17.5 |
| Steel | cheap | 800 | 1500 | 1150 |
| Wood | cheap | 800 | 1500 | 1150 |
| Plasteel | cheap | 300 | 700 | 500 |
| Cloth | normal | 0 | 600 | 400 |
| Chocolate | random | 0 |  2000 worth |
650 worth
|
| Beer | random | 0 | 2000 worth |
650 worth
|
| Medicine | expensive | 10 | 30 | 20 |
Groups of items:
Trader behavior
Trade caravans that come to your colony usually pick a random spot where they will simply wander around and wait for your colonists to send a negotiator for trade. When hungry they may use the colony's tables and chairs for dining, and will sleep on the floor when exhausted.
Retreat
Sometimes, certain occurrences can cause foreign characters to leave your map before you have the chance to interact with them. They can just fight each other just like your own people do. In other occasions, they may get attacked by wild animals. They may leave the map on their own if the temperature becomes too high or too low for them or their animals. Some of them might get killed and others may only get downed, leaving a chance for rescue either by their own or by yourself. Items they drop can be unforbidden for you to take. Those who you rescue can be stripped without penalty.
Foreign traders taking a wounded guest (wild animal attack) back to their base.
Foreign trader downed due to overdose.
Notes
- You cannot buy back prisoners you just sold as a way to insta-recruit anyone (exploit prevention).
- You can trade your expensive items (weapons, sculptures) for other desirable items if the trade ship doesn't have enough silver to complete the transaction. Of course, the amount of silver you can gain is lower, but it is usually better to have a lot of cheap items than an expensive one in your store. Sometimes you have items so expensive that no trader can buy them.