Cargo Racks
Fill every optional internal you can spare. Capacity is income — the same route in a 200 t hull earns four times what it does in a 50 t one.
Guides // Activities
Trading
Buy low, sell high, and build a hauling loop that funds the rest of the fleet.
01
Before You Haul
Trading is the lowest-risk career there is and the one that scales best with the size of your wallet. Nothing about it is difficult — you buy low, you sell high, and the only real skill is looking up where before you launch instead of after.
There is almost nothing to fit. A trader is cargo racks and enough drive to carry them, which is why it is the cheapest career to enter and the fastest to scale.
Frame Shift Drive (the best you can afford)
Jump range decides how many stations are reachable, which decides how good your best route is. A short-legged trader is stuck with whatever is next door.
Fuel Scoop
Small but worth it. Stopping to buy fuel on a long haul wastes more time than the mass ever costs you.
Shield Generator
Keep a modest one. It buys the seconds you need to escape an interdiction (Being pulled out of supercruise by another ship. Escape by keeping the marker centred, or submit.), and it forgives a heavy landing with a full hold.
Frame Shift Drive Interdictor — no
That is for pirates catching traders, not traders escaping pirates. Spend the slot on cargo and learn the escape instead.
Haulers, in ascending order of how much they carry and how much they cost to replace.
| Ship | Class | Price | Description | Build |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type-8 Transporter | Medium | 34.8M CR | One of the best medium-pad trading ships. Excellent cargo capacity and jump range make it a superb balance between hauling power and accessibility. | — |
| Type-9 Heavy | Large | 72.1M CR | A dedicated bulk hauler with an enormous cargo hold. The classic choice when maximum cargo matters more than speed or maneuverability. | — |
| Panther Clipper Mk II | Large | 286.9M CR | The ultimate bulk trader. Its enormous cargo capacity makes it the choice for commanders who want to move more cargo than anything else. | EDSY |
Never fill a hold you cannot afford to lose. Cargo is not insured. The rebuy (The insurance excess to get your ship back after it explodes — about 5% of hull and modules.) covers the ship; the four hundred tonnes of Palladium inside it are simply gone.
02
How the Economy Works
Every station has an economy type that determines what it produces cheaply and what it needs badly. Profit is the gap between those two facts at two different stations. That is the entire trade.
| Economy | Produces (buy here) | Needs (sell here) |
|---|---|---|
| Agricultural | Food, textiles, biowaste | Machinery, fertilisers, tech |
| Extraction | Raw minerals and metals | Food, machinery, medicines |
| Refinery | Processed metals and alloys | Raw minerals, food |
| Industrial | Machinery, alloys, weapons | Food, raw materials, metals |
| High-Tech | Advanced tech, medicines, computers | Food, metals, almost everything |
| Tourism | Little worth hauling | Luxury goods, consumer tech |
The natural pairings fall straight out of that table: agricultural into industrial, extraction into refinery, and high-tech into anywhere remote. A system with two stations of complementary economies close together is a trade loop waiting to happen.
Supply and demand move the price
High supply means a low buy price; high demand means a high sell price. Both drift as commanders and NPCs (Non-Player Character: A ship or person nobody is flying — crew, security, pirates, and traffic.) trade, so a route that paid yesterday may not today.
Faction states matter
A system in Boom pays more and demands more. Famine and Outbreak create enormous temporary demand for food and medicines respectively — these are the best short-term routes there are if you catch one.
Colonisation demand
New construction sites need materials urgently and pay above market for them. Being close beats being cheap, because the demand is time-limited.
Reliable bulk goods
Gold, Palladium, Silver, Advanced Medicines, Consumer Technology and Agronomic Treatment move consistently. They are not the highest margins, but they are always there.
03
The Run, Start to Finish
One loop, in the order you actually fly it. Everything after this section is about doing it better; this is the version that works on your first afternoon with a Cobra and no tools open.
Start where you are docked
Open the Commodities Market and look at what this starport sells cheaply — its economy decides that. You are not hunting the best price in the Bubble yet, only a station nearby that wants what this one produces.
Find the buyer before you buy
Check a destination within a jump or two whose economy needs that cargo. Buying first and hunting a buyer afterwards is how commanders end up flying a full hold in circles.
Fill the hold, not the wallet
Spend on cargo what you can afford to lose, and leave the rebuy (The insurance excess to get your ship back after it explodes — about 5% of hull and modules.) untouched. The market shows you supply and the unit price; buy to fill the racks you have rather than the racks you wish you had.
Fly it like it is heavy — because it is
A full hold cuts your jump range and your acceleration. Plot the route, keep to High Security systems while you are learning, and expect the trip out to feel slower than the trip back.
Sell, then look before you leave
Hand the cargo over and check that starport's market before you undock. Half the time the return leg is sitting right there, and an empty hold on the way home is the most common way to halve your own profit.
Repeat until the price moves
A route pays until supply at one end or demand at the other dries up — you will see the margin shrink run by run. When it does, the loop is finished, not broken. Find the next one.
Start with two stations in one system. No jumps, no interdictions, short supercruise hops, and every credit of margin is yours. It pays less per tonne than a long haul and far more per hour than a long haul you keep dying on.
The hold is not insured. Cargo bought with your last credits is a bet on arriving. Until the ship can outrun trouble, keep the value of the cargo under the credits you have spare.
04
Finding Routes
Do not go looking for trades in the Galaxy Map. It works, and it is far slower than the tools the community built for exactly this.
Inara — trade route finder
Give it your current system, cargo capacity, jump range and available credits, and it returns ranked routes. This is the default tool and the one worth learning properly.
Filter by last updated
Prices come from player-submitted data. A route quoted from three-week-old data is fiction. Always sort or filter so you are looking at recent reports.
Check the pad size
Outposts have no large pads. The best route in the galaxy is worthless if your Type-9 cannot land at one end of it.
Prefer loops to one-way runs
A route that carries profitable cargo in both directions roughly doubles income per trip. A one-way run with an empty return leg is half a route.
EDMarketConnector
Uploads market data automatically as you dock, keeping the community tools accurate. Running it makes everyone's routes better, including yours.
Mission stacking
Often better than the commodity market, especially early. Cargo delivery and courier missions from a busy station frequently share destinations — take every mission heading to the same system, fly once, and hand in the lot. Stacked delivery missions also pay reputation, which unlocks better missions in a loop that compounds.
Do not overlook passengers. Stacked first-class and luxury passenger contracts out of tourist systems can beat bulk hauling outright, and they use cabins rather than cargo racks — a different hull, a different board, the same trip pattern.
05
Staying Out of Trouble
A full cargo hold is the most attractive target in space, and a trade ship is built to run rather than fight. Plan for that rather than pretending otherwise.
Submit to the interdiction
Fighting the interdiction (Being pulled out of supercruise by another ship. Escape by keeping the marker centred, or submit.) means holding the escape marker in the centre of the reticle, and you usually lose — which drops you with your drive on a long cooldown. Throttle to zero and submit (Interdiction Submit: Throttle to zero during an interdiction. You drop out anyway, but with a far shorter drive cooldown.) instead: you drop either way, but with a much shorter cooldown, and can leave almost immediately.
Four pips to engines and boost
The instant you drop, pips (Power Distributor Pips: Six units of capacitor power split between SYS, ENG, and WEP. No group takes more than four.) to ENG, boost away from the attacker, and start charging the drive. You are not there to win.
High-wake, do not low-wake
Jump to another system rather than back to supercruise. A hyperspace jump cannot be followed by an NPC (Non-Player Character: A ship or person nobody is flying — crew, security, pirates, and traffic.); a supercruise entry can be interdicted again immediately.
Avoid anarchy systems with cargo
No security response, and pirates know it. Route around them when the hold is full, or accept that you are gambling.
Solo mode is a legitimate answer. If you are hauling several hundred tonnes and would rather not be a target for player pirates, trade in Solo or a private group. The market and your rank are identical; only the risk changes.
Know what you are carrying. Some goods are illegal in some jurisdictions — slaves, narcotics, and certain weapons. Getting scanned with contraband turns a payday into a fine and a hostile station. Check before you buy, not after.