Trade Center Strategy

Advantage = more income. If you have 1 starbase with an income of say...1.3/sec and you build the 2nd Starbase, you will get 2.6 income/sec

Does this continue forever? Is there a breakeven? I find that I'm generally short on cash early in the game, rather than resources.

I heard something about getting more $ when you built trade centers farther away from each others?

The longest uninterrupted trade route is highlighted with a thick white line when you hover over your credit income. Ships trading along this route get a bonus.

Trade centers don't get diminishing returns, so the more you build the more money you'll get out of them.

Wow. And here I was only building 1 per planet. Noob.   

Its good to spam them on the planets that have a Bonus % for Trade Income too. I think Pure Ice Glaciers are the best I've seen, 30%. But any bonus is good, especially when its a Desert planet, thats a huge amount of trade

Played a MP game not long ago where a teammate (who was squished between me and another teammate, so he was safely protected) got up to 140+ credits per second with trade centers

Is it better to spam 4-5 trade centers at 2 planets far away, or put 1-2 on every planet? I dont seem to notice a bonus because they are all connected only 1 jump away.

I'd also be interested in more info on how the 'trade network' bonuses work.

I just finished a game where at some point my 'trade network' (white line) stopped moving across my empire as I expanded and built Trade Centres. I saw no reason for the line to stop and not auto-adjust itself, but alas it pooped out on me at 5 or 6 planets. Maybe an option to let us manually create a trade ntwork/white line among our trade centres would be nice?

Actually even better, I'd love to see it changed so that there is no longer one line for a 'trade network' but instead have a trade centre network to ALL the adjacent planets' trade centres. Visually that would look more like a spider web than a line. I think that's also a lot more realistic and more resembles an actual network where products/supplies can move along through the empire freely as long as trade ports are connected at some point. I guess the bonus may need to be toned down a little bit to make up for this method being a little 'easier' to establish, but then again maybe not.

I think I hit 200 or so by the end of the game in question... or I may be thinking of another game.

No, it's probably the same game

As I understand it - and I could be wrong - the longest route in your empire between two trade centres determines the base earnings of each trade centre you own.

The 'longest route' is always based on the most direct route between any two trade centres. That's why sometimes it doesn't grow as you build new centres - depending on the layout of the phase lanes, building a new trade centre not result in a new 'longest direct route'.

Being able to manually pick the route wouldn't change anything, as long as the game enforced the same rules (it has to be a direct route, no diversions just to make it longer).

This is from memory as I don't have the figures on hand right now, but I did some testing the other day and came up with the following:

* The longest trade route is not actually the longest possible trade route you could imagine - it's complicated .

* The numbers you get for credit income from trade are rounded.

* Each trade centre gives ~1.15 credits/second base.

* Each 'hop' in the trade route gives *all* trade centres a bonus of ~0.085 credits/sec, even to those which are not directly on the trade route. e.g. if you have 2 adjacent planets, all of your trade centres get an additional 0.085 creds/sec. This scales linearly, so if you have 3 planets in a row you'll get 1.15 + 0.085 + 0.085 to each trade centre.

* Empty systems which are part of the trade route count as hops for the purpose of the bonus (special systems, asteroid belts, etc).

* The route between planets in different star systems appears to count as either 3 or 4 hops for the purposes of the bonus (can't remember off the top of my head - would have to check my figures).

* Distance within a system (i.e. structure placement) has no bearing on the bonus.

* Distance between systems (physical distance) has no bearing, only the number of hops in the trade route.

* TEC can put 11 trade centres on a desert world if they're feeling extra silly. 10 is good because it gives easy numbers for testing purposes (and eliminates some of the errors due to rounding).

* Allegiance bonus doesn't appear to affect income from trade. Neither does planet type (need verification).

* Base trade centres seem to do the same for the two factions I tested (TEC + one other). Probably the same for all of them, with just the techs doing different things?

There are some other factors I haven't checked as I was only going for a rough indication of the trade bonuses, but it's easy enough to set up tests using the galaxy editor (just create a bunch of worlds linked together in a useful way and give yourself a bajillion starting resources). Again, these numbers are from memory so please verify them yourself if you're going to rely on them . It should give you an indication of how things work though.

Placement within a system doesn't matter? I've always tried to place my Trade Centers close to the phase lanes so the trade ships wouldn't have to crawl across the grav well. (Because it seemed logical, not because I know anything). Do the trade ships have any bearing on how much money you make from trade? Or are they just eye candy?

Try talk to A.I Factions all of it, even you are at war, A.I ask me for trading even it's 0% at least normal, I dont know if it's help.

Dead asteroids (no logistic slots) dont count as empty though and interrupt trade routes/dont count as jumps.

TEC get a tech that lets them build structures on dead asteroids (+8 logistical slots).

I put my trading posts, and refineries in between the most heavily defended areas of my gravity wells, merely because they're a high priority target for pirates. It's much easier to lure them into kill-zones this way.

It's more like base is 1 credit per second, each 1 arm of the traderoute multiplies by 1.15 I think. Or 1.2 rounded down :/ Well Craig I think said it was 1.2, but Im not sure of the actual number since that was slightly before release. Either way 2 system traderoute would be 1.2, 3 system 1.3 and so forth.

Maximum route I got on huge map gave me income of 3.7 per second per spaceport, which was ridiculous.

what about refinery ships. do the same rules apply to them?

Refineries work completely differently from trade ports. Each refinery will service *all* extractors within 1 jump of the refinery. If you mouseover the extractors in the system with the refinery and the systems surrounding it, you'll see a 'Refinery Quota' value. Each extractor can support 3 or 4 refineries, depending on the type of system.

Adding more refineries above the quota value is pointless afaics.

I don't actually have figures for the bonus refineries give as it's harder to calculate accurately (annoying rounding problems). I don't believe that refineries benefit from the trade bonus, nor do they form part of the trade route, though I haven't confirmed this.

Given the above, a good strategy is to stick 3 refineries on a planet in a central location which has 3 or 4 links out of it (and none in the surrounding systems).

IIRC the "longest route" is the shortest route between your two farthest-separated, linked, trade centers.

the danger with trade stations is that you wont have enough slots left for tech centers
(on medium 2 small maps in short al the time)


1 trade station per planet gives hell lotsa income
i had 8 planets 1 trade station per planet
income was around 90/sec

refinery ships are nice, but need some serious thinknig b4 placing them

1. what planets are adjecent to the 1 your building it at? (refinery ships wil move 1 phase lane to get materials
2. a refinery provides 1 quoata slots for al extracots on adjecent planets so never make more then necisary

(2)
| \
(1)-(3)----(4)

in this formation 1, 2, 3 and 4 are planets, the /, \, and --- are phase lanes

in order to get a good refinery quota u wil have to build refineries at planets 1, 2 and 3

1 wil provide 1 quota for planets 1, 2 and 3 (self included)
2 wil provide 1 quota for planets 1, 2 and 3 (self included)
3 wil provide 1 quota for planets 1, 2 and 4 (self included)

the outcome means planets 1 2 and 3 have 3 out of 3 refinery quota
planet #4 wil only have 1 quota
building a refinery at planet 4 is a waste since 3 is already maxed out
however if you have the $$$ and logistic slots for it, it wont hurt
also, dont forget you need slots for research centers

me too stupid!!!!!

yea but good luck getting enough slots to build more! i barely have enough slots to initiate research! literally i got like 3 trade ports in each star system. cause that's all i could fit.