Step 12A - The Market!

If you have decided to not complete a mission and check out the market, we encourage you to at least read the Mission Contracts page for additional information. For starters we will need to build space for our market goods to be stored in our mothership. These are the warehouse modules I mentioned in the Building Segments section of this guide. Warehouse modules cost the same, in turns, as biofarms and they can hold 100 units of cargo each. So if you have 10 warehouse modules, you can contain 1,000 units of cargo.

Once you have an adequate number of warehouse modules, you can now begin to purchase items from the market. The main rule of the market is Buy low and sell High. Pay the least per item, and sell for the most per item you possibly can.

The market is a good way to make some credits. There are many different ways to make profit. One is to buy a few high credit items cheap then sell them for a reasonably higher price. Another way to make a profit is to buy mass amounts of less expensive items and then sell them in at a profit for a slightly larger cost.

The Mothership Warehouse Terminal shows how much space you have, how much you have remaining, what is in your cargo and the option to force a buy or sell of an item. The Force buy option will require that you pay the maximum price for an item while the force sell will require that you receive the minimum price for an item.

The way you buy items is to go to the sell offers page and find an item that you A) can afford and B) have the warehouse space to store. You then buy the item as if you were resupplying a fleet. However, the number you enter into the textbox is your bid for the item. You must buy the entire batch and must place at least the minimum bid. You will then have to wait to see if someone out bids you. You will notice that after you bid the item will be highlighted. You will also see your bid in parenthesis if your bid is the highest at the time the page loaded. If you see “Disputed”, it means someone has bid higher than you. You then may place another bid. After give or take 45 minutes, you will get a notice that you have won the bid. It will tell you how much of what you bought and how much you paid total.

You now have items in your warehouse and now get to try to sell them for a profit. To do this you go to the “Place sell/ buy offer” page. There you will see a list of all goods that exist in the market. It will list the items, how many of each item you have in your warehouse, the minimum price and the maximum price for each of those items. Find your item then click the checkbox next to it. Go to the quantity textbox and enter the number of items you wish to sell and input the price you would like to receive from selling each item. You then click the auction button and if your price is good, people will purchase the items. On average, after about 45 minutes you will sell the item. Sometimes you will need to put the item up for auction multiple times before it will sell. Also, you will not get a notice that your item sold, however you will get a log entry. You should check your warehouse and the market often to make sure your items are selling. Remember if the item does not sell the item will return to the warehouse to be stored when it is returned to you, If you buy too much while trying to sell other items, you may end up losing the returning items from a failed sale. This is also the page to place buy offers. Basically if you wish to buy a set number of items at a set price you can input the number of items you wish to buy and the amount you wish to pay for each item in the same manner as placing a sell offer but you press the buy offer. If someone likes your price and has the items they will claim your buy offer and you will get a notice that your buy offer was accepted like when you buy from the sell offers.

There is also another way to sell goods as well. On the main Market page you should have notice buy offers button. This is the place your buy offers (Mentioned previously) go for others to see. If you have some goods you wish to sell and get paid immediately then the “Buy offer” page is the place to do this. The buy offer page is just like the sell offers page except you also see how many of said items you have. If you see a buy offer you like and you have enough of the item to fill the request you may claim the offer to buy your goods in the same manner as you do in the sell offer page but all you have to do is mark the offer you wish to claim and click the claim offer button,

Remember that if you have not checked out the Mission Contracts page to go and read it. It also contains valuable information towards you becoming the top commander.

Special thanks to Gunfighter_Frank for writing this up and putting up with me while I pestered him as I edited his work! Be sure to give him your thanks.