Space Trader — Guide & Strategy

What do you start with?

Every commander starts the same way: 1,000 credits and a Gnat — 15 cargo bays, a 14-parsec fuel tank, one weapon slot with a pulse laser already fitted — plus 20 skill points to spread across Pilot, Fighter, Trader, and Engineer. Pilot helps you dodge and flee, Fighter lands your shots, Trader discounts every ship and piece of equipment you will ever buy, and Engineer patches your hull for free on every warp.

For a first career, favor Trader and Pilot. Trader compounds through everything you purchase, and a high Pilot turns most fights into clean escapes. There is no time limit, so a build that avoids trouble beats a build that wins it.

What should you do in your first hour?

You begin docked. Open the Market: there is one price per good, the same to buy and to sell, and the dot under each price shows where it sits in today's galactic range — green means cheap, amber means dear. Buy whatever runs green. Then open the Chart, pick a system inside the dashed ring (your fuel range), and warp. A warp burns fuel equal to the distance in parsecs and takes exactly one day, however far you jump.

On arrival the game auto-saves and the local market rolls fresh prices. Sell what runs amber, buy full service at the dock — fuel first, hull second — load the next green bargain, and go again. That loop, run patiently up and down the price gradients, is the entire early game. Once the first few runs have paid, buy an escape pod (2,000 cr.) and an energy shield (5,000 cr.) before you buy anything else.

How do you read price differences?

Prices follow tech level. Raw goods — water, furs, food, ore — get more expensive as a system's tech level rises, while manufactured goods — games, firearms, medicine, machines, narcotics, robots — get cheaper. So the standing trade is to haul raw goods from low-tech farm worlds up to hi-tech systems, and haul manufactured goods back down. On the Chart, each system's dot color is its tech level.

Crises pay even better. A system with an amber halo is in crisis and pays 50% over the odds for the matching good: war raises ore and firearms, plague raises medicine, drought raises water, boredom raises games and narcotics, extreme cold raises furs, a crop failure raises food, and a labor shortage raises machines and robots. A crisis also chokes local stock, so bring the good in from outside. On top of that, each government pays about a third more for the one good it especially wants, and local resources nudge prices a step in either direction.

What is the core trading loop?

Buy low, warp, sell high, service the ship, and put the profit back into cargo. Margins scale with price: firearms and narcotics carry the best spreads in the game, but both are contraband under many governments — police inspections confiscate them and fine you. Water-and-food runs are slower but nobody arrests you for them.

Keep a cash reserve. Repairs, fuel, wormhole tolls, and the occasional bribe all come out of the same pocket as your next cargo load, and a trader with empty pockets and empty bays earns nothing.

When do ship upgrades matter?

Upgrade when cargo bays cap your profits, not before. The shipyard takes your current ship and all its equipment in trade at 75% of value, and your Trader skill discounts the sticker price. From the Gnat, the Firefly (20 bays plus a shield slot, 25,000 cr.) or the Bumblebee (25 bays, two shield slots, 60,000 cr.) are the natural first steps.

Past that, pick a doctrine. The Beetle is a pure hauler — 50 bays for 80,000 cr., but a thin hull and almost no weapons, so it lives by fleeing. The Hornet (three weapon slots) and Grasshopper are fighters. The endgame hulls, the Termite (60 bays behind three shield slots) and the Wasp (35 bays and three weapon slots), sell only at the highest-tech shipyards for 225,000 and 300,000 cr. Shipyard stock depends on the system's tech level, so the big hulls mean flying to hi-tech systems to shop.

What equipment is worth buying?

The escape pod first — 2,000 cr. at any shipyard. With one, losing your ship costs the ship and cargo but not your life or your credits: you resume in a battered Flea three days later. Without one, destruction ends the career and clears the save. Shields come next, ahead of bigger guns: an energy shield is 5,000 cr., a reflective shield 20,000 cr., and shields recharge to full between fights while hull damage lingers.

Gadgets are quiet money. Five extra cargo bays cost 2,500 cr. and stack; the navigating system adds +2 Pilot, the targeting system +2 Fighter, and the auto-repair system +2 Engineer. The cloaking device (100,000 cr., top-tech systems only) lets most encounters pass without ever seeing you. When you do want teeth, the beam laser (12,500 cr.) and military laser (35,000 cr.) replace the starter pulse laser.

How do pirate encounters work — fight, flee, or surrender?

Pirates want your cargo, and you get three choices. Fleeing is a Pilot-skill contest against theirs, tilted by difficulty: succeed and you slip away, fail and they get a free shot before you try again. Fighting a pirate down pays a bounty plus salvage and improves your police record and reputation. Surrendering lets them strip your holds — and if your bays are empty they take credits instead — but you fly away alive.

Two things to respect: opponents scale with your wealth, so a rich commander in a soft ship is exactly what pirates are hoping for; and while shields recharge between fights, hull damage persists until your engineer patches it en route or the dock crew repairs it for credits. A pirate that is badly outgunned will often turn and run from you on sight.

How do police encounters work?

With a clean record, most police contacts end with a scan and a wave-through. When a cruiser does demand an inspection, submit if your holds are legal — the search finds nothing and your record even improves. If you are carrying firearms or narcotics, the goods are confiscated and you are fined up to 10,000 cr., with a mark on your record.

You have alternatives, all priced in reputation. Where the local government is corruptible, a bribe is usually cheaper than the fine. Fleeing an inspection is noted on your record; opening fire on the police brands you a criminal, and criminals are attacked by police on sight across the whole galaxy.

Should you take the bank loan?

Almost never. The bank charges 10% interest per day, compounding on every warp — a 10,000 cr. loan costs about 1,000 cr. a day just to hold. The credit line tops out at 25,000 cr. with a clean record. Borrow only to bridge a specific, already-scouted profitable run or an emergency repair, and repay it within a few days before the interest eats the margin.

How does saving work?

The game auto-saves to your browser's local storage every time you dock — close the tab any time and resume at the last landing. There is one save slot per browser; starting a new commander overwrites it. Signing in with a free En Dash account is optional and adds cloud saves across devices plus the Hall of Fame for retired commanders.

How do you win?

Amass 500,000 credits, fly to the Utopia system, buy the small moon for sale there, and retire. The day counter is the score: every warp costs one day, so the connoisseur's game is retiring rich in as few days as possible. The three wormhole pairs — pink rings on the chart — help: for a toll of 25× your ship's fuel-unit cost they cross any distance in a single day with no fuel spent, which is how fast careers are built.