Deep drilling: Steel, my kingdom for some Steel?!

[Shurp]

Use your comms console to call every faction and ask for a bulk goods trader. Steel is infinite and readily available.

And then the bulk goods caravan shows up with a fantastic... 200 units of steel?

I suppose if you're swimming in silver this is an adequate solution.  It might even be time effective against drilling or colonizing for it.  But I miss the frequent orbital trader visits that would drop tons on me back in a14.

[JuicyPVP]

I do wish there were more steel per bulk goods trader. I start trading away drugs for steel LONG before my map is out of it. I know I'll use it eventually. Im probably only 1/3 mined of the entire map im on atm and I started buying steel basically right after my first flake run. Otherwise I only buy Bionics and shells (just steel...) from traders. On the rare occasion a trader doesn't have what I want I'll pick up gliterworld meds. 

[DeathWeasel]

Use your comms console to call every faction and ask for a bulk goods trader. Steel is infinite and readily available.

And then the bulk goods caravan shows up with a fantastic... 200 units of steel?

I suppose if you're swimming in silver this is an adequate solution.  It might even be time effective against drilling or colonizing for it.  But I miss the frequent orbital trader visits that would drop tons on me back in a14.

Don't forget all the components too. After buying out 8 caravans of all their components I had well over 80 of them. Not a bad way to stock up for late game machinery breakdowns or building the ship. I too miss the frequent orbital traders, but we've got to take what we can get.

[Listy]

Some have suggested a mining colony.

My first thought was:
I'm not sure I have enough manpower for that. I suppose a quick journey to another tile, nick all the metal then get out again might not be the worst idea. But even so that's just a temporary solution.
Second thought was hey, why can't I use my Thrumbo and Megasloth for caravans?

Maybe If I shot up some tribals they'd start to raid me.

[NeverPire]

My problem is Uranium. I have been almost ready to leave the planet for months now. I just can't get hold of that Uranium to build the last part of my ship. I've had 5 exotic traders come by, none of them had Uranium.

To find easily Uranium, look for a revealed mining area of two, three tiles, no more.
Only Uranium has so small mining area so it's easy to find it.

2-3 tiles => Uranium

8-10 tiles => gold, jade, silver

12-20 tiles => chemfuel

more => steel, plasteel

[b0rsuk]

Think of the poor fellas that play Flat Tundra ! How are they supposed to make chemfuel from trees ?

[NeverPire]

Think of the poor fellas that play Flat Tundra ! How are they supposed to make chemfuel from trees ?

Or Ice Sheet, Desert, Extreme Desert and not only the flat one, all of them.

[Gorzong]

For trading the traders I grow a metric ton of devilstrand and I have a level 20 crafter make clothes. You get a lot of money from superior and higher clothes. I also just hit a couple plasteel veins. That should have me in components and steel for quite a long time. That stuff is expensive.

Gorzong.

[NeverPire]

For trading the traders I grow a metric ton of devilstrand and I have a level 20 crafter make clothes. You get a lot of money from superior and higher clothes.
Gorzong.

For trading clothes, the best material is alpaca wool, alpacaes can be tamed by level 0 colonist so you can have a lot of them easily and a shoddy aplaca wool t-shirt is sold 400.

[Limdood]

Use your comms console to call every faction and ask for a bulk goods trader. Steel is infinite and readily available.

You can cut the cost of getting caravans to a mere 300 silver after you pay them to boost mood to 40+

Additionally, I don't see how you could have used up ALL the steel on the map WITHOUT swimming in silver.  Even getting silver in the sea ice challenge isn't too hard.  You can monetize anything.

Lastly, unless you're desperate, just call outlander towns.  Tribes don't generally have as much supplies with their caravan.

And then the bulk goods caravan shows up with a fantastic... 200 units of steel?

I suppose if you're swimming in silver this is an adequate solution.  It might even be time effective against drilling or colonizing for it.  But I miss the frequent orbital trader visits that would drop tons on me back in a14.

[NeverPire]

If you go directly to a neutral faction base, you will see that there traders have from 2000 to 4000 steel to sell, in each base of the world map.
And every 6 months if I remember, their stocks are refilled.