Trading is an essential skill in the X3 universe. There are many forms of trading.
Basically you want to buy cheap and sell expensive. The game uses a supply & demand mechanism.
What this means is that products in short supply have a higher demand thus higher price. Products that have already been well supplied are in low demand thus are cheaper.
Depending on the product it may unversally have a high or low demand. There’s also a stock exchange in the game which i will not explain but the stocks are based on this trading system and can be manipulated through trading within systems included in the stock exchange earning you a nice amount of money on the side. In earlier versions of the game it was a viable option to make millions off stock exchange alone but this has been patched to be harder.
You do not require reputation (except high enough to actually conduct business) to sell anything, but you do require reputation to buy certain things (Such as Shields, Missiles and Weapons)
Instead of explaining all kinds of details about trading i will just give a basic guide for starting the game as a humble merchant.
You start with a Mercury TS class ship and a Discoverer M5 class ship and a handful of cash. I suggest the first thing you should do before mapping sectors on the M5 is to earn enough money to fully upgrade its engine speed and buy a triplex scanner. To do this quickly turn your ship to the right (North) and fly to Power Circle. There are 4 Solar Power Plants in the sector and i suggest you find one that is very nearly or completely fully stocked on Energy Cells. You can see their stock by pressing “U” (for Info). If you’ve flown next to all of the power plants you can view them in the sector map to find the one with the largest supply of energy cells. Dock at it (for me it was the one right next to the jumpgate to the left, by the time i had flown a circle around the system to map all the SPPs it was stocked enough to sell at the minimum price). You want to buy for 12-13 and sell for 17-19. You should avoid energy cells sold or bought at 14-16 unless you’re buying for personal use.
Next find a place to sell it, find stations that use Energy Cells as a resource (through info window) and find one that is very poorly stocked, the less it has the more it’ll pay. For me i could go right to Ore Mine M Alpha near the middle of Power Circle and sell for 18. Then i flew to SPP M Delta and bougt again as much as i could afford for 12, then sold again at the same ore mine for 19 (i was just so slow that they spent more than i could bring them. I repeated the process 1 more time with SPP M Delta and Ore Mine M Alpha leaving me at a total of 32K credits. Repeat this until you have roughly 58k credits (est: 5 trips). If you want to keep your discoverer (not sell it after mapping) keep doing it until you have 98k Credits(est: 8 trips). I recommend going 1 extra trip if you decide to keep the discoverer to make it easier to start trading again to be on the safer side.
You need roughly 36k Credits to buy a full cargo hold of Energy Cells for the minimum buying price selling it for the maximum price returns roughly 57k thus earning you a nice 21K credits through the mercury. It is not the best product to trade, but it is definetly the best place to start since it is guaranteed that everyone needs it and someone somewhere is going to have run out. It is considered the safest investment in the game.
On your last trip press R, click the discoverer, and order him to follow you. When you finish the trip and the discoverer is within 1km, order him to stop, fly as close to him as you can without crashing into him, and press Shift +E to eject before the ship flew past him. then target him and press shift +E again to get on board (need to be within 50m of ship) after that start flying to argon prime through herron’s nebula and order the mercury to follow you. Once in argon prime, order the mercury to dock at the shipyard or equipment dock. (Equipment dock if you gathered 98k)
Now you have 2 options for sector mapping.
1: Manually do it yourself.
2: Make an AI do it for you.
With 2 you need to make your way to teladi space and find an equipment dock that sells Exploration Command Software.
With 1, which i recommend you do at this stage of the game just to learn how it works. you simply fly around the sector close enough to target every single object existing in it. The duplex scanner makes this task much easier, and a Triplex scanner which can be purchased at military outposts would make this even easier.
Start by docking your discoverer at the equipment dock in argon prime (If you gathered enough money to keep the discoverer, order your mercury to do so as well) and buying maximum Engine Tuning & Boost Extension & Trading System Extension (On both ships, + Rudder Tuning on the mercury.) Then quickly fly through Home of Light to Presidents End into Elena’s Fortune and go dock at the Military Outpost to buy a Triplex scanner.
If you have 10k or more credits left over it’s ideal to send your mercury on energy cell trips while you’re mapping, this requires you to have Trading System Extension installed on your own ship and is much easier (as you can see pricing of produts if you also have it on the mercury through the info window of stations) If not you just need to finish the mapping on your M5 before selling it.
How (and what) to Map:
Press period (.) to open the local sector map, now activate your seta, and make your ship fly around the sector by clicking on the map until you’ve flown over the entire sector. After issuing the command to fly to a point on the map to your ship you can go out of the sector map and issue orders to the mercury if you are using it for trading while mapping.
Map in the following order:
Elena’s Fortune -> Farnhams Legend -> Bala Gi’s Joy.
Back to President’s End -> Cloudbase SE -> Ore Belt -> Cloudbase SW -> Emperor Mines -> Cloudbase SW -> Red Light -> Home of Light -> Argon Prime -> The Wall -> Argon Prime -> Ringo Moon -> Cloudbase NW -> Three Worlds -> Power Circle -> Herron’s Nebula
You can also Antigone Memorial after power circle before you end your trip.
You can also optionally map
Emperor Mines -> Paranid Prime -> Empires Edge -> Preacher’s Void -> Duke’s Vision (Big, can skip) -> Emperor’s WIsdom (Big’n almost empty) -> Trinity Sanctum -> Pontifex’ Realm -> Emperor’s Ridge -> Priest’s Pity -> Priest Rings -> Duke’s Domain
Short -> Paranid Prime -> Priest Rings -> Priest’s Pity -> Emperor’s Ridge -> Duke’s Domain -> Empire’s Edge
To expand your business into Paranid territories.
This will take a while so you’d best make yourself comfortable while doing it.
You don’t actually have to map this many sectors but it is advisable (for a bigger playground). You can make do with this however:
President’s End -> Cloudbase SE -> Ore Belt -> Home of Light -> Argon Prime -> The Wall -> Argon Prime -> Ringo Moon -> Red Light -> Cloudbase SW -> Emperor Mines.
Now its time to put your focus on trading again.
If you have less than 60k credits and an unupgraded mercury: dock your mercury and discoverer in any shipyard (Argon Prime is good…) then go to landed ships -> click -> Advanced -> Freight Exchange and transfer all upgrades from discoverer to your mercury. Then do the same again but instead of Freight Exchange go to “Change Ship” then go to Trade and sell your discoverer. After that send your mercury to the equipment dock and buy the upgrades previously recommended.
If you have an upgraded mercury and 10k credits or more: You’re good to go!
If you have an unupgraded mercury and 60k credits: Upgrade your mercury already!! but make sure you have at least 10k credits left over to start trading again. (preferably 36k)