What is "Trade" and why is it needed
In the pardus world, very much like in every other world, life costs money. The better your ship is the more it costs to keep it running, and that is even in case you don't get anywhere neer testing it's limits. Average daily upkeep costs of well armed battleships may get as high is 7-10k credits a day. The small training fighter ships get to 2-4k credits a day.
If to consider training, battles and upgrades to your ship, along with keeping up the defenses, which are allways needed due to the ever frail security of the Pardus galaxy - life in pardus costs a lot of money.
Of course that is not something that would occupy a lone pilot, who can afford to live on the edge of bankropcy and has nothing to look after (or for) other than himself.
Organizations in pardus - such as our collective - however can not afford such a thing. The economy/trade is the backbone of any organization. Strong economy is the path to a strong alliance - kitchy but true. An alliance with strong economy can support the progress of it's members better. Profits from the economy are individual pilots' profits, but pilots' wealth is directly affecting the alliance wealth - by taxes, or by donations.
The funds at an alliance's disposal can go towards projects, individual pilots might find overwheliming. The most basic example of such project is a construction of MO defensive walls that would secure passages to key locations - such projects easily raise to costs that for a single pilot are astronomical.
Also in times of war, credits flow out like water through sand. If it is for the upkeep of defenses or for the support of the fighting forces - might be missiles, might be afterdeath repairs, might be nessesary ship upgrades.
A stable economy within an organizations also allows tha organization to assist individual progress of it's members and promotes the organization as an attraction for wondering pilots, and increases the power of the organization by numbers.
So how is a strong economy built?
The answer to this question is the purpose of this guide, since the direct answer is very abstract and there is a lot of possible drilling down into every part of the direct answer.
Making Profit and Supporting Economy
The best way to make credits in pardus is trade. In a sector that is managed right it is possible to make 200,000+ credits a day with a big enough cargo hold. But to do that you have to know what you are doing.
The idea is also to keep the production running so that you could keep making the profits from trade and not run it into a dead end from which noone gains.
Also if you are a building owner, in order to make the best profits from your building and allow it sink in well with the other buildings around it make sure your settings nd prices are set in such a way that a trader would be interested to conduct buisness with your building.
Here is an example of a full supply round in a sector/area where the central location is a StarBase:
1. Get energy from the SB to stock buildings, dump the leftovers or take them to the planet and get food and water there.
2. Go through all the end product buildings (HW, BWP, Droids, Robots) and take their producion to the SB/other buyer - (robots to the DAC).
3. Go through all the electronics buildings and take the electronics to the buildings that use them and the SB.
4. Go through all the smelters and take the metal - first to electronic facilities than the others.
5. Go through the plastics facilities to get plastics for the electronics bildings, and the rest to HWF and SB.
6. Stock the PLastic facilities with gas and chems. (gas i usualy drop, chems i take to recyclers and SB)
7. Go through all asteroid mines taking ore to the smelters and gems to the optic labs
8. Go through all the food farms, taking equal amounts of food and water to the buildings. The extra food goes to the SB.
9. Food Water Energy runs to the nearest planet - mainly bringing water since the farms get enough extra food for the SB.
In case you are stocking a sector with an M class planet, first step would be taking food and water to the buildings, and energy is the last step.It is important to notice that food and water are sold to buildings in equal amounts - since allmost all the buildings consume them in equal rate, unbalancing the food water amounts in buildings will create a great inconvinience in stocking them later on.
Also important to pay attention to Planet food prices when doing FWE runs - It is often better to let the SB populations decrease a bit than to exhaust a planet's food supply and raise it's food prices - this will eventualy harm your own income.
Sometimes it's a good idea to open an exel sheet and list all the commodity requirements in buildings on the sheet when bringing energy(FW) to the buildings. That way if there is an overproduction of a certain commodity and there is no place to sell it aside from the buildings for profitable price, you will know the exact demand and won't buy more than you need.
How Not To Trade
Few things you should know to avoid in trade:
Don't sell unequal amounts of food and water, try to keep them balanced in buildings.
Don't leave Min settings in your buildings production commodity unless saving it up for a project.
Don't set sell prices to 99,999 while the commodity minimum is lower than it's max stock.
by Bug: Never buy anything at 9,999
- Painfull evidense
Don't buy out all the production without stocking the building up.
Try to avoid stocking buildings with partial stock.
Mining
Some basic resources can be collected by pilots, for free from the surrounding space. These resources are mainy: Fuel, Energy, Nebula Gas and Ore(with a mining laser). These resources are find on specific tiles in space, and the maximum capacity a field can hold is 500 tons of resource.
You must be very thoughtfull, for your own sake, when collecting these resources. The less resource there is at the tile the slower it will regenerate.. When only 250 resource is left in a tile it will take several days to regenerate... When less than 150 tons remaining it will take a week.. When less than 50 remain it will take weeks.. and when the amount is lower than 20 the resource can no longer be mined and will take long weeks to regenerate to usefull amounts again. This is what widely regarded to as strip mining.
Inexperienced pilots often stripmine fuel, because they just don't think better. As a result, the more densly populated sectors are sometimes imposible to go through as about 50% of the AP are spent on search for a tile with some fuel.
Consideration of future, your own and others' is required in order to mine resources without causing ecological harm to the surrounding area,
