My methods of making money in past versions isn't working so well any more.
-Art
Made good money on this in older version, no I almost never see exotic traders. Tribals don't buy them.
-Plasteel Weapons
Locals are too poor to afford them, the trade ships that have passed by will buy my guns, but not my melee weapons.
-Prepared Meals
Plenty of food currently, but people and pets eat at such a rate that I can't get a stockpile built up. And they seem to really not want to haul harvested food to the freezer unless I tell them to.
-Invader Clothing
Again I am rarely seeing anyone that will buy them.
The problem to me seems to be 90% of all traders I'm getting are tribal locals who seem to have very little silver to trade even if they would buy what I want to sell. I may be wrong, but what they bring may seem to reflect your perceived wealth. The one trader that I did make good money off of selling Thrumbo horns, the next traders that came brought a lot more stuff and had more silver but still seemed to not want to buy anything that I would consider something the player would reliably be able to sell. They will buy my pets, food, and medicine most of the time but that's about it. But apparently raw food is not something anyone on this planet needs as it has virtually no trade value, when in reality I'd think food would be one of the most commonly traded commodities.
They have no interest in my produced goods otherwise. Well, I'm poor because you're poor.
Any tips?
What I normally do is sell Corn to traders.
I used to sell corn in Alpha 12, so that's what I tried to do in this Alpha as well. Surprise surprise, in six seasons nobody wanted to buy it, neither trade ships nor caravans, and now I'm sitting at over five thousand corn and have to build a third granary just to have somewhere to store it.
human meat and human leather/hats made from them.
a single bulk goods trader in a year will grant 6k+ and doesnt take that much effort just the refrigeration.
Elephant horns and beer are my go-tos.
Clothing and art are more ore less worthless. The pain of managing a massive inventory just to have them sold off for nothing just isn't worth it. Melee weapons can at least be salvaged, so those are still good for raising crafting.
So far, I find that medicine and beer are the only real staple cash crops that will net a reliable return on most trades.
Livestock is also a gamble, unless you're the heartless type that can skin down husky babies, it's not worth keeping more than a few of them. They reproduce quickly, eat alot, and don't sell for all that much anyways. Hauling is also overrated for training.
Alpaca and chickens are good. Muffalo are also good if you have access to large crop farms and know how to save up during winter. I've experimented with rabbits, but they eat way too much for what they yield.
Simply put, trade has been seriously nerfed in a13. It's barely worth the trouble. Build what you need instead. Long term the only limit is how much steel you can scrounge up to build components for powered armor.
Quote from: Mathenaut on April 16, 2016, 02:38:59 PM
[...] and art are more ore less worthless.
You used to be able to scrap art. So if the piece wasn't Masterwork or above it got Hammer Time!
And Wooden small sculptures with two tool chests produce rather quickly.
You still can scrap art.
Just deconstruct it. Works minified, or constructed.
I sell those ship cores you get from psychic ships which net about 3000 silver. Then also Thrumbo horns sell for about 1000 silver (that may be for two of them) even if they are a little more dangerous to get. Then of course some fantastic art will net you a good profit, I usually place pieces of art in relevant places, like a colonist convincing a prisoner to join the colony, and if there's no where I can place it then I'll sell it. I also mass produce plasteel (since building a ship isn't my goal I really don't have much of a use for it.
I find that beer, meals (though animals can make it painful) and tribal weapons (clubs, shortbows, ect) are good options to sell. Animals as well go for a good price, as well as slaves. It depends who is trading of course, whos in the market for it, but meals and tribal weapons seem the most reliable to sell.
My income came from different sources: selling invader clothes, trumbo horn, elefant tusk, prisoner to slavery, harvested organs, insect jelly. Still have 3 thousand human meat and a lot of skins waiting for buyer. Make 10 thousands silver after first year. I almost never sell food and crop
Quote from: makapse on April 16, 2016, 12:56:00 PM
human meat and human leather/hats made from them.
a single bulk goods trader in a year will grant 6k+ and doesnt take that much effort just the refrigeration.
How do you manage the colony-wide mood debuff? It's absolutely brutal.
Quote from: sadpickle on April 16, 2016, 08:18:12 PM
Quote from: makapse on April 16, 2016, 12:56:00 PM
human meat and human leather/hats made from them.
a single bulk goods trader in a year will grant 6k+ and doesnt take that much effort just the refrigeration.
How do you manage the colony-wide mood debuff? It's absolutely brutal.
Alchohol.
err its just -6 to all colony. I butcher with someone who doesnt mind butchering to get out of the -16. hungry has -8 and forced joy gives enough + to counter the debuff. even looking at corpses is -9 so just dispose off them quickly . I may have some people with soft breaks when they are hungry or freezing and hard when both.
Quote from: hector212121 on April 16, 2016, 08:27:28 PM
Quote from: sadpickle on April 16, 2016, 08:18:12 PM
Quote from: makapse on April 16, 2016, 12:56:00 PM
human meat and human leather/hats made from them.
a single bulk goods trader in a year will grant 6k+ and doesnt take that much effort just the refrigeration.
How do you manage the colony-wide mood debuff? It's absolutely brutal.
Alchohol.
Sorry, calling BS. Maybe in earlier alphas, but in A13, the debuff for selling prisoners and butchering humans stacks, and lasts for most of the season. Heavens forbid you get hit with a psychic drone during any of this. Your colony is gone.
unless you're on like, ice sheet, it's not worth the trouble at all, if you have lhamas and you're hunting you should have more textiles than you can transform anyway, just feed the bodies to your animals
i dont sell prisoners and butchering only stacks on the butcherer.The colonywide debuff is only -6 no matter how many we butcher and with the constant raids, they never end if you butcher all the people. And there are ways so that the butcherer does not get any debuff too and thats vital to the economy. And yes, i play on -100C ice sheets
Quote from: Mathenaut on April 17, 2016, 01:20:54 AM
Quote from: hector212121 on April 16, 2016, 08:27:28 PM
Quote from: sadpickle on April 16, 2016, 08:18:12 PM
How do you manage the colony-wide mood debuff? It's absolutely brutal.
Alchohol.
Sorry, calling BS. Maybe in earlier alphas, but in A13, the debuff for selling prisoners and butchering humans stacks, and lasts for most of the season. Heavens forbid you get hit with a psychic drone during any of this. Your colony is gone.
Beer can prevent pretty much any break if you manage your colonists' drinking yourself. I had my best surgeon lose her bonded cat, husband, father and best friend in the span of a single week, but I managed to keep her sane by making her constantly tipsy. Combine that with a bonus for impressive rooms and you can power through pretty much anything, just make sure your colonists don't get drunk, hangover is a pretty severe penalty.
Try to stagger it a little. If you get prisoners, cut off their legs first so they can't escape or have a mental break. That gives you almost unlimited time to deal with them. Then harvest their organs one after another, giving them a little break in between operations in case someone accidentally messes up the surgery.
Meanwhile you put all the corpses of your fallen enemies into a separate walk-in freezer that you only use for human corpses (so no one walks into them and gets the "Seen corpse" mood debuff. Also put a butcher table right into that freezer if you can.
Then, when your colony has forgotten about the harvested organs, butcher up ALL of the human corpses in one day. All of them. Make sure that your butcher is not a teetotaler so you can knock him out with beer afterwards.
Also try to have a separate stockpile for the leather, because it's surprisingly ugly.
Remember that human leather is worth a ton, so making clothing or furniture out of it can severely ramp up your colony value and increase the severity of raids.
Quote from: Mathenaut on April 17, 2016, 01:20:54 AM
Quote from: hector212121 on April 16, 2016, 08:27:28 PM
Quote from: sadpickle on April 16, 2016, 08:18:12 PM
Quote from: makapse on April 16, 2016, 12:56:00 PM
human meat and human leather/hats made from them.
a single bulk goods trader in a year will grant 6k+ and doesnt take that much effort just the refrigeration.
How do you manage the colony-wide mood debuff? It's absolutely brutal.
Alchohol.
Sorry, calling BS. Maybe in earlier alphas, but in A13, the debuff for selling prisoners and butchering humans stacks, and lasts for most of the season. Heavens forbid you get hit with a psychic drone during any of this. Your colony is gone.
Alchohol manages 2 mood buffs. Joy and tipsiness.
Helps if you have the weed mod, which I don't, actually. Then you have 3 buffs to work with.
Also, remember to get your prostophiles bionics, and try to balance males and females. Having even numbers seems to guarantee lovers cropping up. Successful relationships give a constant+10 and consistent +12 to mood. Getting married is a full season of complete unbreakability.
I have a year-round growing period colony in "temperate" zone. Selling herbal medicine is nice, and visiting traders all buy it. Mufallos are easy to tame. Taming + selling is less effort than making them reproduce.
Hauling animals are VERY good on large maps. On default and smaller training takes too much time. In alpha12 they totally saved my butt when my 3 starting colonists were all bad back, frail and age 60+.
In Alpha13, I question the usefulness of Comms Console. I've seen townie traders carrying plasteel. Maybe you need the console for pirate merchants (sell weapons).
My fortune was built on art. Traders are rare, but you just have to wait for them.
Right now I have 6 artists, who make only huge stone sculptures. When trader shows up I take all his valuable stuff: silver, gold, bionics, artifacts, launchers... even thrumbo horns to place in colonist's rooms. But even then I have some sculptures left to place all over my base. Even in the fields for farmers to see (which is really nice idea by the way).
Quote from: b0rsuk on April 18, 2016, 05:43:51 PM
I have a year-round growing period colony in "temperate" zone. Selling herbal medicine is nice, and visiting traders all buy it. Mufallos are easy to tame. Taming + selling is less effort than making them reproduce.
Hauling animals are VERY good on large maps. On default and smaller training takes too much time. In alpha12 they totally saved my butt when my 3 starting colonists were all bad back, frail and age 60+.
In Alpha13, I question the usefulness of Comms Console. I've seen townie traders carrying plasteel. Maybe you need the console for pirate merchants (sell weapons).
Frequency and quantity. Vanilla has even numbers of ships and caravans.
In other words, a good event can be popped without you seeing it if you don't have the console, and you'll miss the ship.
We'll see. I'm on a default size map, flat. There's little steel. No plasteel in sight. I fear I will have to get most of my stuff from traders.
Yeah, flat doesn't work too well in a13. I recommend playing on large hills so you can at least get some plasteel.
Well there are always mechanoids :-). Tribals are worth making peace with, but mechanoids juicy and predictable.
Traders ended up balanced too low in A13, they'll be more prevalent in A14 and later.
Can we assume that we will be ...well, not forced, but pushed towards relying more on land-based traders than ships in A14? I'm quite enjoying them, since it gives me a reason not to kidnap and/or murder any visitors that drops by.
It'd be nice to see trade weighted in a sensible fashion - space traders want stuff they can't easily get in space, ie fresh or exotic crops and meals, pets, local art whereas locals want stuff they can't get hold of, ie advanced material items.
Would be good to see food locally having greater demand in winter. Tough choice, sell food in winter for a premium or keep it all for yourself?
If anything, there needs to be a more severe penalty for robbing a caravan. When they carry high-quality gold weapons and other nonsense, there's absolutely no reason (aside from common decency) NOT to massacre them and steal their goods.
Perhaps guarantee a retaliatory raid and lock out improving relations for a season, something like that. They are so, so exploitable right now. Most of them carry enough silver to repair any relations hit.
The traders and muffalos drop down dead as it is on ice sheets, I had 1 that had 2 AI cores and 2 gold statues, along with psychic lance and other odds and end drop in the middle of my killbox by cold