Profitable Privateer trade routes?

I

IDontHaveAName

Spaceman
What do you think are the best profitable profiteer trade routes? I'm not talking about the stuff from the merchants guild about "take 10 units of iron to New Detroit for $10,000." I'm talking about just buying the iron in Achilles and selling it in New Detroit.

The most profitable route I've discovered so far is the simple Oakham, Pentonville-New Detroit, New Detroit line. Just load up on holographics, home apps, advanced fuels, plastics, and the like in ND, sell them in Oakham, buy contraband, and sell the contraband in ND. It's a simple back-and-forth route, involving no triangles or chains of bases or anything, but with a Galaxy with a 225 cargo hold, with Righteous Fire prices, it'll reliably pull in $10,000 each way (i.e., $10,000 for the trip from New Detroit to Oakham, $10,000 for the trip from Oakham to ND). That is, assuming you don't game it by saving once you've loaded up in Oakham and loading again so that you can have cargo hold jam-packed with contraband by the time you actually launch. If you do that you can get a lot more :^).

Any other good routes? Like most people, I think that the life of the non-mission merchant was kinda screwed over in Privateer. If I had the power to magically change things in Privateer, I'd give you the special option of "bulk buy/bulk sell" for people moving, say, 100 or 150 units of the same commodity, in which, instead of going through the automated commodity exchange, you talk directly to producers (for buying) or retailers/users (selling), probably in the bar. The story-line rational for this is that if you buy tungsten in, say, Achilles, you aren't really buying it from the mining company. The mining company doesn't like to deal with small-time traders who want to buy 40 tonnes, so it sells the tungsten to the commodity exchange for $80 a tonne, then the CX sells it to you for $100 a tonne, then you fly to New Detroit and sell it for $140 a tonne to the New Detroit CX, and the New Detroit CX sells it to a manufacturing company for $160 a tonne, since the manufacturing company doesn't like buying directly from small-time traders any more than the mining company likes selling to them. However, if you're a big mover-and-shaker with a Galaxy who's willing to dovote almost all of his hold to the same commodity, then the mining company is willing to talk to you directly, and sell at producer prices, and once you get to ND, the manufacturing company is willing to talk to you directly and buy at retail prices. This could make trading worthwhile, but the wholesalers would probably have more demanding standards than the CX (e.g., if you're a known pirate, the "family-friendly" firm you're selling food dispensers to might reject your offer on ethical grounds).

Also, if I had the magical power to change things in privateer, I'd make it so that there were four kinds of ship dealers, "backwater" who sell on poor planets, who gave you the option of a Demon, an Orion, or a Galaxy, "paramilitary," who sell on Perry or near the Kilrathi border, who gave you the option of a Demon, an Orion, or a Centurion, "commercial," who sell on New Detroit and maybe a few other big commercial worlds, who gave you the option of the Orion, the Galaxy, or the Drayman, and "rich," which sell on New Constantinople and some elite pleasure planets that sell Galaxy, Centurion, or Drayman. Also, maybe a pirate ship dealer who sells beat up ol' Tarsuses and Talons?
 
Another question related to privateer trading. When smuggling contraband (a lot of it, that is: more than can go in that secret compartment), if you can scanned, there's a brief moment between the "scanning: maintain speed and course" and "contraband detected" in which the autopilot flashes on. How often can you hit the autopilot, and thus evade the militia/confed's wrath? I think I can do it about 1/4 of the time.

P.S. Isn't it odd how privateer is roughly simultaneous with WC3, but private dealers are selling a ship almost as good as the new, top-of-the-line Excalibur (the Centurion, that is) to any old schmuck with the $500,000 needed to buy a top-of-the-line Centurion?
 
Raxis in Potter quadrant is the most profitable trade route in the game, as far as I'm concerned. It's got a refinery and an agricultural planet situated close enough to be within one autopilot of each other (so no danger of pirates etc in between). I'd say it's pretty hard to beat a refinery\agricultural symbiosis in a single system.
 
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IDontHaveAName said:
P.S. Isn't it odd how privateer is roughly simultaneous with WC3, but private dealers are selling a ship almost as good as the new, top-of-the-line Excalibur (the Centurion, that is) to any old schmuck with the $500,000 needed to buy a top-of-the-line Centurion?
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In the scope of Privateer, the Centurion is pretty good. However, think about the ships you are fighting in the Gemini sector: they are all pretty old. A Centurion probably could not hold its own against a Hellcat or an Arrow with WC3 loadout.
 
IDontHaveAName said:
Another question related to privateer trading. When smuggling contraband (a lot of it, that is: more than can go in that secret compartment), if you can scanned, there's a brief moment between the "scanning: maintain speed and course" and "contraband detected" in which the autopilot flashes on. How often can you hit the autopilot, and thus evade the militia/confed's wrath? I think I can do it about 1/4 of the time.
Click to expand...



Another smuggling trick that you can try is when they bring up the "Maintain speed and course" message, come to a dead stop and jettison your cargo. After they search and say that there’s no contraband detected, tractor beam it back in and be on your marry way. Technically, you don't need to come to a dead stop to do this, but it's safer so you don’t run the risk of running in to your own cargo destroying it.

That’s the easiest one I've found.
 
The idea of bulk trading is interesting, but I don't know if it was something really relevant in the game's scope. The trade system is REALLY simple... this would add a layer of complexity that maybe wasn't possible with the rech they had at the time.

But it's a great idea for a modern game, because it gives an edge to the player who decides to be a trader.
 
Nomad Terror said:
In the scope of Privateer, the Centurion is pretty good. However, think about the ships you are fighting in the Gemini sector: they are all pretty old. A Centurion probably could not hold its own against a Hellcat or an Arrow with WC3 loadout.
Click to expand...

It wasn't impossible to blow up Broadswords and Paradigms with it.
 
Hmm... the Excal vs. Centurion thing is confused by the fact that, in spite of being simultaneous, Privateer and WC3 have no common ships except the ubiquitous Dralthi, and even in the case of the Dralthi, they're different models. The Privateer Dralthi is more like a WC2 "Drakhri" than a WC3 Dralthi. Come to think of it, it was probably a kind of silly thing to say.
 
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