Station Types
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When considering two stations to trade between, it is worth paying attention to the station types. VO has five station types: Capitol, Commercial, Mining, Research and Barracks. Although there are exceptions, it is usually unprofitable to trade between stations of the same type, e.g. Barracks to Barracks. Furthermore, Capitol stations tend to be less profitable then the other types. Trading between dissimilar station types and avoiding Capitol stations, as a general rule, will yield the most profitable results.

Another factor in choosing station pairs is distance. Clearly, the profit is in buying and selling, not motoring through space. Your game time will be used more efficiently if you choose pairs of stations that are close together.

Price Dynamics
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Buy prices (i.e. you buy, the station sells) in general vary for each item at each station. These prices are static. However, sell prices (you sell, the station buys), in addition to being variable, are also dynamic. This means that the sell price of a given item at a given station drops after every sale and slowly drifts back up if sale activity ceases. As a result of this dynamic behavior, the sell price of an item at a particular station can "tank" if there is too much sale activity on it, by all traders combined, within a short period of time. As a general rule of thumb, it is usually unprofitable to sell more than 500 units of a given item at once.

Because of VO's dynamic pricing system, it is possible to set up what appears to be a dynamite trade, arrive at the destination, and discover that your competitors have tanked the sell price, resulting in a meager profit or even a loss for you. In this situation, your options are to look for another station to sell at, or store your cargo and come back in a couple weeks, hoping for a better price then.

Weapon Trades
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This leads us to some points about weapon trades. These trades are not optimum for the newbie trader. First, you do not have access to very many weapons at first, whereas you do have access to all ores and commodities. Second, weapon sell prices, with a few exceptions, tank rapidly, making weapon trades in practice far less profitable than they appear on paper. Third, weapon trades do not give trade xp, whereas commodity trades do. Fourth, weapons are heavy. If you have not yet experienced the delight of docking a Behemoth XC fully loaded with Gatling Turrets, you are in for a real treat the first time you try this.

Static Trades
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As has already been implied above, some items at some stations are static, i.e. they do not tank. There are both commodity and weapon static items. Discovery of them is by trial and error. Players who know of such items often keep this knowledge closely held. Discovering static items can be richly rewarding in the long run, but plan on losing money while you are searching for them. Good luck.

Static weapon trades tend to be more profitable than static commodity trades, but note the point above on the large mass of ships loaded with weapons.

TGFT is aware of a very small number of enhanced trade routes, based on extravagantly inflated sell prices for certain commodities at certain stations. As with static trades, such knowledge tends to be closely held. Again, good luck -- they are out there, and they sometimes appear in odd corners. (Hint -- look in grey space.)

Station Lists and the Daily Trade Report
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In the Commerce/Welcome display of your PDA, at each station, you will see a list of items headed "Our reserves of the below items are running low. We'll pay well for deliveries of any of these items." Well, zowee, that really sounds spectacular! How kind of the devs to serve up such a handy recipe for instant wealth!

Alas, the truth is otherwise. In this case, you should apply the dictum "If it sounds too good to be true, it's too good to be true." TGFT has observed the following problems with such trades:
-- Most of the items are available at only a few stations, and you are not informed where those are. Some items, like Samoflange, cannot be purchased anywhere.
-- Acquiring the items, in many cases, requires you to take a long trip through grey space, which may be dangerous for a newbie.
-- The profit usually is not spectacular, and you can do as well or better with a well-selected trade in your immediate neighborhood, using the methods described above.

Under Your PDA/Comm/News, you will find a Daily Trade Report. This report encourages trading specific items between specific pairs of stations. TGFT has observed that, although the sell prices for these trades are indeed a little higher than normal, their profit per cu is not extraordinary. We do not recommend the Daily Trade Report as a suitable basis for a highly profitable trading program. However, many of these trades do form a suitable basis for getting shot at a lot by pirates and trolls, if that is what you are interested in.

Trade xp
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Trading for trade xp is a little different from trading for credits. Certain items confer high trade xp per cu, even though they do not earn much. Examples are Coolant and Bearing Grease, which give the highest at 12 trade xp per cu. So if you are trading to be able to buy your first Behemoth (trade 8, mining 4) or Behemoth XC (trade 9, mining 4) and don't care too much about credits for a while, try trading these items.

Faction Standing
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TGFT recommends building your faction standing in every area of the universe where you wish to operate, because it is a useful defensive attribute. Although not all pirates behave the same, there are some who are reluctant to attack you in monitored or guarded space where you have "Admired" standing or better.

A good way to gain faction standing, as well as trade xp, is to take Trading Guild/Procurement missions ("bulk procs"). Keep in mind that bulk proc missions recycle. Therefore, it is advantageous to carry as much of the specified item as possible on your return trip. Store the excess at the destination, and wait for that mission to recur. When it does, load up your ship from your stored supply, launch and immediately redock, and you will receive credit for the proc. The bulk procs with the higher money values also give more standing points. We recommend you ignore the "time bonuses" offered on these routes, because they are too small to be important.

High faction standing is necessary to unlock certain ship and equipment items that are sold only by particular nations or factions. The highest standing you can acquire is "Pillar of Society" (POS), signified by a gold bar on your accomplishments display. The grind from 900 standing to 1000 (POS) goes slowly and requires patience. There are thirteen nations and factions, therefore thirteen gold bars available for you to earn.

The faction standing system works less effectively in UIT space than in Itani or Serco space (also called "nation space"). UIT standing is operative only at UIT wormholes and certain stations that are designated as guarded by UIT. Most stations in UIT space are guarded by one of the several factions sprinkled throughout UIT and grey space. For example, having high UIT standing is of no value at a Valent station in Verasi, even though it is located within UIT space.

Trades that are made on your own, apart from a mission requirement, earn trade xp but not standing.

Pirates
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There are various approaches to dealing with pirates, and TGFT does not officially recommend one over another. We do advise the newbie trader that it takes experience to be able to outrun or outfight a skilled pirate, and that grey space, and even UIT space, can be dangerous. It reduces your stress level to think ahead of time about what your approach will be -- pay, run or fight -- should you meet a pirate on a trade run.

Our friends at the Viper Guild [VPR] have posted expert advice on piracy at their [VPR]pedia, http://www.viperguild.com/wiki/index.php5?title=Main_Page. TGFT recommends asking VPR for free escorts and actionable intelligence when operating in grey space. We also recommend informing VPR via PM of any pirate sightings, so they can more effectively help others. The VPR chat channel is 4357 [HELP].

Conclusion
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Trader, we hope you have found these tips interesting and profitable. There is much more to know about safe and profitable trading, as TGFT members discuss regularly in guild chat and the member boards of our forum. If trading is your RP and you would like to be among the wealthiest and the best, we invite you to register on this forum, upon which a Recruiting board will appear. You may post an application for TGFT membership there. Our members can be contacted in-game via PM or on chat channel 444 [$$$]. Give us a shout any time.