Economics of small-scale interstellar trade

[Vanguard]

Originally posted by Fax:
Is this broken? I'm not sure. I do know that if I was a merchie and had a ship I'd pool all my weath, find a decent planet pair with one jump between and just run spec cargo on that route for several iterations until I'd built up enough of a bankroll to do what I wanted to.

As stated in Far Trader, the Law of One Price applies here. If a given run was that profitable, then everyone else would be making that run as well, and then the demand for those goods would begin to max out. This would cause the price to drop until it wasn't massively profitable anymore. CT and T4 had this problem as well.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Originally posted by Vanguard:
[QBAs stated in Far Trader, the Law of One Price applies here. If a given run was that profitable, then everyone else would be making that run as well, and then the demand for those goods would begin to max out. This would cause the price to drop until it wasn't massively profitable anymore. CT and T4 had this problem as well. [/QB]

That's only if you keep buying and selling the same cargo, or same cargoes each way.

If you find the right two worlds, you can create a profitable situation no matter what the spec cargoes are, depending on your merchant character's modifiers. Myself, I like finding a triad -- one industrial world, one agricultural world, one non-industrial non-agricultural world rich in raw materials, all just Jump 1 away from each other.