Traders are the lifeblood of any economy – no matter how big or small. They ensure buildings are traded on time, that they don’t overflow with excess production and stockpiles don’t accumulate in the wrong place.

Traders are on every day – regular as clockwork to make sure your buildings make money, that planet populations are maintained and starbases continue to thrive.

Everyone can trade, but to be a great trader requires more than just carrying some food and water to a building once in a while.

Trade Etiquette

Ranking opportunities, ambushes, emergencies and limited cargo capacity can all work against even the most dedicated trader – but some simple points can ensure you make the best of the situation.

• When taking food and water from buildings around a starbase, always make sure they are stocked to tick
• If a starbase has no room left, make some! Turn on your Magnetic Scoop and buy Animal Embryos (or Energy if there are excessive amounts) and sell it to the Blackmarket (or dump it into space)
• When stocking buildings always supply even amounts of Food and Water (if they are uneven, balance them out)
• When trading a building, ensure it has enough upkeep to tick until you are due to return again
• It is better (in terms of production quantity) to supply 3 buildings for 1 tick than it is to supply 1 building for 3 ticks
• Keep an eye on shortages or excesses and let others know so they can import or export them if required

In general, try your best to treat all buildings as though they were your own.

The Magnetic Scoop increases the quantity of resources you can hold in your ship at any one time.

The recent addition of the Enhanced Magnetic Scoop increased the amount that can be stored by a further 100t to a whopping 250t extra storage space.

The Large Print Giveth and The Small Print Taketh Away

Unfortunately, when you put resources into the Magnetic Scoop, the cost of moving your ship suddenly shoots through the ceiling. The more you have in your Magnetic Scoop, the greater the movement penalty for your ship.

This is no problem if you don’t intend on moving (for instance, when performing building upgrades – another pilot can drop resources onto you, allowing you to complete upgrades without having to increase the capacity of your building).

If you do plan on moving, you might be interested in exactly how much of a movement penalty you will have to deal with.

The Original 150t Magnetic Scoop

movement_penalty = ceiling ( amt_in_scoop / 5 ) + 10

Example: 75t in your Magnetic Scoop costs 25 action points per tile extra.
Example: 150t in your Magnetic Scoop costs 40 action points per tile extra.

The Enhanced 250t Magnetic Scoop

This is basically 10 action points per tile cheaper that the 150t Magnetic Scoop for the same amount of resources. Of course it can hold an extra 100t as well.

movement_penalty = ceiling ( amt_in_scoop / 5 )

Example: 75t in your Magnetic Scoop costs 15 action points per tile extra.
Example: 150t in your Magnetic Scoop costs 30 action points per tile extra.
Example: 250t in your Magnetic Scoop costs 50 action points per tile extra.

Don’t go hauling goods long distance with a full Magnetic Scoop – but it may be ideal for travelling 1 or 2 tiles. You be the judge!

With the addition of an improved Mag Scoop (able to hold up to 250t), transporting goods through Y-Holes and X-Holes has become a viable option to consider when travelling large distances.

According to the Pardus Manual, jumping a Y-Hole or X-Hole initially costs over 2,000 action points and is based on your Maneuver skill. The higher your skill, the less action points are required to perform the jump (as with a regular Wormhole).

Be sure to remember that your Maneuver skill is significantly affected with a full Mag Scoop. While the cost to jump might be 1,100 action points with a Maneuver of 68, a full scoop may reduce your Maneuver so much that it will most likely cost 2,000 action points regardless of your starting Maneuver skill.

Our recent NPC Skilling Order for Imperials guide suggests Roidworm Hordes are ideally placed to take your Hit Accuracy from 42 up to about 55.

Some call them docile and harmless, but I have heard stories that they can explode when angered – causing tremendous damage to any pilots foolish enough to be in the vicinity.

Once dead, Roidworm Hordes take about 6 hours to respawn – within 2 or 3 tiles of the location indicated below.

Have you every wondered why some Player Starbases have a worker population of exactly 50,000 – while others have a population of exactly 50,083? Just what is so special about those numbers?

Every Starbase tick, a payment (marked as tax) is made to the Starbase coffers based upon the current number of Workers living there. For non-Core Starbases, this figure is calculated as 20% of the worker population.

The default setting for a Starbase population is 50,000 workers, requiring 100t of Water and 150t of Food per Starbase tick (every 3 hours) to maintain.

It appears that using the default of 50,000 population delivers nice round numbers (profit per Starbase tick):

50,000 workers + 100t Water + 150t Food = 10,000 credits

Why is it common to see 50,083?

Due to the impact of rounding numbers, the same 100t of Water and 150t of Food, can sustain 50,083 workers! With this slight increase in population comes an increased amount of tax revenue as well.

50,083 workers + 100t Water + 150t Food = 10,017 credits

Instead of 10,000 credits, a Starbase with 50,083 workers is paid 10,017 credits per Starbase tick. While 17 credits can’t buy very much, it equates to over 49,000 credits per year – for zero extra work or cost!

How high can you go?

Doubling the initial numbers that we used earlier allows the same observation…

100,000 workers + 200t Water + 300t Food = 20,000 credits

After some testing, it turns out that you can support a population of 100,083 Workers for the same upkeep costs:

100,083 workers + 200t Water + 300t Food = 20,017 credits

As before, exactly 17 credits extra profit is paid per tick which equates to over 49,000 credits per year.

In Conclusion

For doing nothing but changing a setting… once…

Setting the Worker Population to be 50,083 instead of leaving it at the default of 50,000 leads to an extra 49,000 credits per year.

It’s hard to understand why any Starbase Commander would deliberately overlook such an obvious money making opportunity!