No Man's Sky Tips for earning Units via trade routes:

General Games Survival Games
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Accidentally posted this under GD first instead of GG. Moved here:

NMS: Tips for earning Units via trade routes:

  1. To maximize, open up as many inventory slots in your exosuit as possible. Specifically, you want to start opening up the Expanded Cargo tab which will hold larger stacks sizes. Every time you travel to a new star system, visit the Space Station and upgrade your exosuit there. Then exit the station, call the Anomoly (Nexus) and purchase the exosuit upgrade for that system on the Nexus as well. First upgrade is 10k. Second is 20K, and each thereafter increases by another 10K to a cap of 1Mil. (Don’t worry, you will make this money back through the trading).

  2. As soon as you can purchase an Economy Scanner for your starship, install it. To maximize your trading routes, you will be looking for Prosperous star systems with “3 Stars” by their economy icon. You also want to look at the buy/sell values with high positive Sell percentages and high negative Buy percentages. The economy scanner will show these details in the galaxy map, so it’s fairly intuitive.

  3. When you are ready to travel to the next Prosperous system, if you have a Capital ship use it for the jump, not your starship. The Capital Ship has an extended range and burns less fuel for the same trip.

3a. Add the 10 available storage compartments to your Capital Ship as soon as you have the resources to do so.

3b. If/when you obtain the plans to do so, add a teleporter to your capital ship to allow you to use the extra storage from a distance, as long as your capital ship is in the same star system.

  1. When you arrive at the new system, hop in your Starship, exit your Capital Ship, and hit your Economy Scanner to scan for a Planetary Trade Hub. Of note: You get better prices on the Planetary Trade Hub than on the Space Station upon first arrival. Therefore, YOU ALWAYS WANT TO BUY/SELL first on PLANET, not on the Space Station (though you will go to the station later as described below).

  2. When at the Planetary Trade Hub, sell any high profit goods you are already carrying, and then start buying the “locally produced” goods available. These should show rather high negative buy percentages, meaning you can buy them at low cost. Buy as many as will fit in your inventory. NOTE: Your exosuit’s main inventory can hold most of these only in stacks of 15, but the Expanded Cargo tab can hold the items in stacks of 30 to 45. Move as many of these stacks to expanded inventory as you can and fill up.

  3. Once you’ve made your Planet-side purchases, hop into Space and fly to the Space Station. Go to the Galactic Trader kiosk on the space station and sell what you just purchased on the planet. Yes, you will see a negative value for the sell price here, but it’s a smaller percentage than the purchase discount you had on planet. You’ll actually earn some Units here by doing so, as well as CRASH THE LOCAL ECONOMY. Now go to the Buy tab at the Kiosk and note how the buy price percentage has plumeted even lower than what you saw on planet. Buy it all back (plus the extra inventory the station had, if you have room in your inventory).

  4. Don’t forget to purchase your Exosuit upgrade Slots here on the Station and again at the Nexus before leaving the system.

  5. Now that you have your purchases, you need to look for a profitable trade route. Go back to your capital ship and begin looking for another Prosperous (3 star) system of the appropriate type. There is a specific sequence of trade routes you want to be looking for, as follows. When in the Galactic map, switch the filters to display the Economy Colors to make it easy to find what you are looking for.

Trade Route #1 (4 economies):
High Tech (Light Blue / Cyan) → Power Generation (Red) → Mining (Orange) → Construction (Yellow) → Back to High Tech

Trade Route #2 (3 economies):
Trading (Green) → Advanced Materials (Purple) → Scientific (Dark Blue) → Back to Trading

So, for example, if you start at a Red Power Generation hub and buy Spark Canisters and Industrial-Grade Batteries, you want to find a Mining hub next and sell those items for a massive profit. REMEMBER, ALWAYS SELL AT A PLANETARY HUB first, not at the Space Station. Go back to Step 5 and repeat.

  1. Once you have your trade routes planned out, you can use the Space Station portals to make travel faster rather than hopping into your capital ship every time. (Or just build a base near the Trade Hub on the planet, if you prefer.) Just keep in mind that resources take time to resupply, so you will need to expand your trade network out to multiple systems and determine a fixed loop. Maybe concentrate on an 8 to 12 system Trade Route 1 for a while, then move to a 6 to 9 system Trade Route 2 for a while, etc.

  2. PROFIT

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