Posted November 26, 2013
high rated
I love Wing Commander Privateer for its freedom of enabling me to do what I want and be who I want, so far as my piloting skills and credit account will take me. But while you can choose between the live of a merchant or a mercenary, most find it easier to fulfil the role of the latter. That's why I created the Privateer Traders Guide.
This guide isn't about trade routes. Instead, I'm just providing useful information on the characteristics of each commodity, enabling the player to make more informed decisions when buying and selling goods. I'll also provide some tips and strategies to make the life of a merchant easier so that you can get out there and start hauling cargo.
Part 1: The Trader's Guide
Attached are two images that comprise the traders guide, one for Privateer and another for Righteous Fire which has a revised price schedule. You can print these off on an 8.5x10 sheet of paper for reference during your travels through the Gemini Sector. All forty commodities are listed on the guide and the following characteristics are displayed for each:
Image: Shows the graphical icon of the commodity as seen in-game. Note that Construction Equipment and Mining Equipment share the same image.
Commodity Name: The name of the commodity. Commodities are listed in alphabetical order for ease of searching.
Average Price: This is the approximate value of the commodity in credits. There are two numbers listed. The upper number with the white background is the value at bases that produce the item, or the expected purchase price. The lower number with the gold background is the value at bases that consume the item, or the expected sell price. The actual value may be higher or lower than the numbers listed here, but this will give you a good base of reference in identifying a good offer from a poor one.
Trade Restrictions: One in four commodities have trade restrictions imposed on them. These are indicated by a red icon. A trade restriction means that an item can not be purchased or sold at particular bases. There are four types of trade restriction, each identified by an icon: a bandit mask, a wrench and hammer, a radioactive symbol, and a house. A key provided at the bottom of the guide will indicate which bases will not trade in goods with this restriction.
Commodity Scores: I have scored each commodity for three qualities on a scale of 1 to 10, with higher scores preferred over lower ones. Some scores are highlighted with a red or green outline. A green outline indicates that this item is among the top-ten in its class, while a red outline indicates that it's in the bottom 10. With this information you can determine a commodities characteristics at a glance. The scores are listed from left to right as follows:
Profit: This is the optimal difference between a good's purchase and sell values. Trading goods with a high profit score will tend to earn you more credits on a per-unit basis, provided you know the best trade routes. Unfortunately profitable goods tend also to be expensive to purchase so you'll need to earn a lot of of cash before you can start trading them in volume.
Yield: This score indicates how much money you can make from trading a good as a ratio to the amount of credits you invested in purchasing it. Goods with high yield scores are great for growing cash quickly and are especially good to trade in during the early game or after you've purchased an expensive ship upgrade, times when you don't have a lot of cash on hand to buy more profitable commodities.
Security: Privateer has no qualms about selling you goods that it knows you'll have a hard time selling for a profit. Some items might have bad buy/sell margins while others might only be profitable when sold at particular bases. The security score helps you avoid these items. Trading goods with a high score will always yield a profit while low scored goods might be sitting in your hold a while before you figure out what base type is willing to pay the most money for it.
To appreciate the difference between profit and yield, take this example: Let's say that you're flying an Orion, which can carry 75 units of cargo, and have 1,000 credits in the bank. With that cash you can probably fill your hold with grain or purchase one unit of plutonium. Grain has a high yield but low profit score while plutonium is very profitable but has a low yield score. Assuming we can sell these goods at a typical price, one unit of plutonium would earn 98 credits while seventy-five units of grain would bring in 750 credits. Clearly investing in grain is the better value because we're limited in the amount of credits we can spend.
But let's say instead that we have 75,000 credits in the bank. That would be enough to fill our hold with plutonium, which we could sell at a profit of about 7,350 credits. In short, high yield goods are preferable when you are restricted by the amount of cash on hand while high profit goods are preferable when you are restricted by the cargo space available on your ship.
Don't get too worked up over the scores. All the commodities are profitable under the right circumstances. This guide is designed to help you take advantage those circumstances when they appear. Take Games for example. These have a very low profit and moderate yield but are very secure. That makes Games good as a filler commodity when your cargo hold has space available. You might not make much off of the investment, but you'll know you make something off of it. Contrast that to Robot Servants which have a terrible yield and are very risky but can bring in good money if you have the money and know which bases are willing to pay a premium for them.
All commodities are an opportunity in Privateer. The fun for a a trader is in discovering those opportunities and deciding how to best take advantage of them.
Note: For some reason GOG isn't letting me post my Part II on how to use the Com and faction reputation to your advantage. It might be a character cap limit so I'll try posting it later as a separate post in the thread.
This guide isn't about trade routes. Instead, I'm just providing useful information on the characteristics of each commodity, enabling the player to make more informed decisions when buying and selling goods. I'll also provide some tips and strategies to make the life of a merchant easier so that you can get out there and start hauling cargo.
Part 1: The Trader's Guide
Attached are two images that comprise the traders guide, one for Privateer and another for Righteous Fire which has a revised price schedule. You can print these off on an 8.5x10 sheet of paper for reference during your travels through the Gemini Sector. All forty commodities are listed on the guide and the following characteristics are displayed for each:
Image: Shows the graphical icon of the commodity as seen in-game. Note that Construction Equipment and Mining Equipment share the same image.
Commodity Name: The name of the commodity. Commodities are listed in alphabetical order for ease of searching.
Average Price: This is the approximate value of the commodity in credits. There are two numbers listed. The upper number with the white background is the value at bases that produce the item, or the expected purchase price. The lower number with the gold background is the value at bases that consume the item, or the expected sell price. The actual value may be higher or lower than the numbers listed here, but this will give you a good base of reference in identifying a good offer from a poor one.
Trade Restrictions: One in four commodities have trade restrictions imposed on them. These are indicated by a red icon. A trade restriction means that an item can not be purchased or sold at particular bases. There are four types of trade restriction, each identified by an icon: a bandit mask, a wrench and hammer, a radioactive symbol, and a house. A key provided at the bottom of the guide will indicate which bases will not trade in goods with this restriction.
Commodity Scores: I have scored each commodity for three qualities on a scale of 1 to 10, with higher scores preferred over lower ones. Some scores are highlighted with a red or green outline. A green outline indicates that this item is among the top-ten in its class, while a red outline indicates that it's in the bottom 10. With this information you can determine a commodities characteristics at a glance. The scores are listed from left to right as follows:
Profit: This is the optimal difference between a good's purchase and sell values. Trading goods with a high profit score will tend to earn you more credits on a per-unit basis, provided you know the best trade routes. Unfortunately profitable goods tend also to be expensive to purchase so you'll need to earn a lot of of cash before you can start trading them in volume.
Yield: This score indicates how much money you can make from trading a good as a ratio to the amount of credits you invested in purchasing it. Goods with high yield scores are great for growing cash quickly and are especially good to trade in during the early game or after you've purchased an expensive ship upgrade, times when you don't have a lot of cash on hand to buy more profitable commodities.
Security: Privateer has no qualms about selling you goods that it knows you'll have a hard time selling for a profit. Some items might have bad buy/sell margins while others might only be profitable when sold at particular bases. The security score helps you avoid these items. Trading goods with a high score will always yield a profit while low scored goods might be sitting in your hold a while before you figure out what base type is willing to pay the most money for it.
To appreciate the difference between profit and yield, take this example: Let's say that you're flying an Orion, which can carry 75 units of cargo, and have 1,000 credits in the bank. With that cash you can probably fill your hold with grain or purchase one unit of plutonium. Grain has a high yield but low profit score while plutonium is very profitable but has a low yield score. Assuming we can sell these goods at a typical price, one unit of plutonium would earn 98 credits while seventy-five units of grain would bring in 750 credits. Clearly investing in grain is the better value because we're limited in the amount of credits we can spend.
But let's say instead that we have 75,000 credits in the bank. That would be enough to fill our hold with plutonium, which we could sell at a profit of about 7,350 credits. In short, high yield goods are preferable when you are restricted by the amount of cash on hand while high profit goods are preferable when you are restricted by the cargo space available on your ship.
Don't get too worked up over the scores. All the commodities are profitable under the right circumstances. This guide is designed to help you take advantage those circumstances when they appear. Take Games for example. These have a very low profit and moderate yield but are very secure. That makes Games good as a filler commodity when your cargo hold has space available. You might not make much off of the investment, but you'll know you make something off of it. Contrast that to Robot Servants which have a terrible yield and are very risky but can bring in good money if you have the money and know which bases are willing to pay a premium for them.
All commodities are an opportunity in Privateer. The fun for a a trader is in discovering those opportunities and deciding how to best take advantage of them.
Note: For some reason GOG isn't letting me post my Part II on how to use the Com and faction reputation to your advantage. It might be a character cap limit so I'll try posting it later as a separate post in the thread.
Post edited November 26, 2013 by ColBashar
