SunDog: Knowledge equals profit

Rolling a new Zed.

I restarted the galaxy, now a little wiser to its ways. In this new game, I maxed out Zed's luck - the only stat which can't be boosted with drugs - leaving the rest at their default of 30/100. Right away, I completely refueled, repaired, and refit my space ship. That last task is made rather tedious by the drag & drop interface and other quirks.

Buying replacement parts

...and installing them

Controlling what is basically a mouse cursor with a joystick is already kind of annoying just because of a senseless scheme based on the stick's absolute analog position, where if you want to click on something in the upper-left quadrant of the screen, you've got to push the joystick partway up and to the left and wiggle it around in that vicinity to get it where it needs to be, and if you release the stick so that it returns to center, the cursor snaps back to the center of the active window as well. You get used to it eventually, but it's never convenient, and there are further inconveniences.

• Ship stores are cash-only, so you've got to withdraw from the bank, and whatever you withdraw, you risk losing to muggers.
• The store view shows you a bunch of arcane icons representing each ship part, and it doesn't tell you what each part is or what they cost until you click on them. Doing this prompts you to buy the component, and if you don't, the shopkeeper gets annoyed and stops talking to you (and gets rude if you re-initiate dialog).
• You can only carry four objects. And with all that cash you're carrying, you might want one to be a gun. You probably will need multiple trips to the store and back.
• Why, oh why, does the act of walking require me to fiddle with weird joystick controls to move a cursor and then click when it's pointing in the direction I want to walk? I'm already using a joystick. Just let me walk with the joystick!
  

 

Before leaving, I queried prices at the exchange. As I mentioned in the last post, you won't get a complete picture. However, I found that the deals you can view will rotate each time you enter and leave, and by doing this repeatedly, I got prices on ten different commodities at a variety of grades.

 

Cargo	Low	High	A	B	C	D	E
Stimulants	180	200				18000
Furs	145	160				16000	14500
Art objects	140	176		17600		14000
Hand weapons	101	156	15600	13900		11100	10100
Pharmaceuticals	72	91		9100	8000	7200
Stock embryos	68	86		8600
Biochips	65	91	9100	8100	7200	6500
Fruits	23	36	3600	3200	2800		2300
Seeds	21	32	3200	2900	2500	2300	2100
Grain	16	22		2200	1900		1600

 

Following the advice of commenter MorpheusKitami, I started exploring the planet rather than trying to warp to others. This can be done by leaving the city grounds, and it's best to do this in your pod. I first transferred my food and medicine from the ship stores to the pod - a tedious process that must be done in batches of four items at a time - and then drove off into the wilderness.

I half-expected random encounters, but found none. The world maps are pretty barren. The only threat here is running out of stamina, which you aren't warned about - you just fall asleep in your pod. You've got to eat too, though if you forget, you'll probably pass out well before you starve to death, and this shows your vitals onscreen when it happens, likely reminding you that you need food. It's better to check your stats manually once in awhile and eat before sleeping.

Exploring around, the first town I encountered was Obburg, which seemed to have the same economic properties as Jondd - same general prices, same black market goods, just no starport to buy fuel at. Repeating the exercise at the exchange, I found these prices:

Cargo	Low	High	A	B	C	D	E	F
Stimulants	144	160			16000	14400
Furs	144	144				14400
Clothing	124	124	12400
Hand weapons	92	156	15600	13900	12300	11100	10000	9200
Art objects	92	144	14400		11300	10200	9200
Droids	58	90	9000	8000		6400	5800
Biochips	47	57		6400	5700	5200	4700
Pharmaceuticals	47	73	7300	6500	5700	5200	4700
Meats	33	52	5200				3300	3100
Stock embryos	29	50		4400	3900			2900
Grain	9	16	1600	1400	1200			900

Running art objects from Obburg to Drahew seemed like it might have the biggest profit yields, but just because you can get B-grade art objects at Drahew for $17,600 a load doesn't mean they'll sell that much, so I kept exploring the planet.

The next town I discovered was interesting.

 

Consisting entirely of an exchange-like complex and a nonfunctional building, I figured this must be the lost colony! Still, my initial goal remained to explore the planet, gather commodity prices, and then use them to make money.

I scouted out the remaining cities - Esposito, Darvilton, and Dramming, and found them all to have the same economic factors as Drahew and Obburg. Esposito had a cryogen stashed in its warehouse, which I noted but ignored. After querying commodity prices everywhere, I compiled a list of planetwide prices using grade 'A' values, estimated where exact prices were unavailable.

	Darvilton	Drahew	Dramming	Esposito	Obburg
Stimulants		25600		20300	20200
Furs		22800	20200		20500
Art objects		19800	19900	17500	14400
Hand weapons	13800	15600		21400	15600
Clothing	9300		9300	11300	12400
Droids	9000		10000		9000
Pharmaceuticals		10200	6800	6800	7300
Stock embryos	5400	9700	6100	4100	4950
Biochips		9100		8100	7200
Meats	4700		4700	5300	5200
Seeds	3600	3200	2800	2800
Fruits	3100	3600	2500
Grain		2500	1600		1600

 

From this list, my best bet for making a profit seemed to be running hand weapons from Darvilton to Esposito, so I went there and picked up a load, throwing in some stock embryos for good measure. Then, checking to see what the local sell price was, I was caught by a big surprise - they sold for more than what I paid!

The hand weapons, at grade A, cost $13,800, and the stock embryos, grade B, cost $4,800. Turning around and selling them right back, they netted $18,200 and $6,400, respectively.

New strategy - buy every offer if it's well below the planetary going rate, and then immediately check the sell price and sell it right back if it turns a profit!

My trade logs over the next session:

Good	Grade	Buy	Sell	Profit
Hand weapons	A	13800	18200	4400
Stock embryos	B	4800	6400	1600
Hand weapons	B	15600	16200	600
Stock embryos	E	3500	4600	1100
Clothing	D	6600	8400	1800
Art	B	15600	18300	2700
Hand weapons	D	11100	11500	400
Art	D	14000	14600	600
Clothing	B	10100	12500	2400
Clothing	C	7300	10200	2900
Art	F	11600	13600	2000
Hand weapons	A	15600	20300	4700
Hand weapons	C	12300	14400	2100
Stock embryos	B	5400	3200	-2200
Hand weapons	C	13800	14400	600
Hand weapons	C	12300	14400	2100
Furs	E	11600	12000	400
Hand weapons	A	15600	16200	600
Clothing	D	8800	10000	1200
Furs	A	18000	8250	-9750

 

I did not sell the stock embryos or furs at a loss, but held on to them with the expectation that they'd fetch a profit somewhere else. This pirate-free, zero-fuel exercise made me $8,800 richer without having to go anywhere, and I had two loads of cargo potentially worth much more than that. But I also learned something about SunDog's cargo economy, even if it raised more questions than it answered.

The buy and sell prices took a real journey! There doesn't seem to be any connection at all between a good's buy and sell price, but I took a look at price trends, using the assumption that each good's grade is worth 90% of the grade above it.

• Art's purchase price relative to quality went up, as did its sell price. The value of grade 'F' art was noticeably higher than I expected it to be.
• Clothing's purchase price spiked twice but ended exactly where it started. The sell price zig-zagged.
• Fur's value tanked after I bought the second load of it.
• Hand weapons were the most commonly traded item, and here you can see quite clearly that C-grade weapons' purchase price went up and down while the sell price stayed the same. The overall buy and sell prices crested and dipped seemingly independently of each other, though in all cases I was able to sell for more than I paid.
• Stock embryos' purchase price went up with each purchase, sharply so after the last one, while the sell price free-fell after my third purchase.
• Fruit prices, interestingly, dropped a bit even though I never touched the market.

 

I took one last look at the sell prices of my cargo, and the stock embryos at gone up in price to $6400, the same price that I sold the first load for! But this time I didn't sell, and took my pod on another tour around the planet to check prices.

	Darvilton	Drahew	Dramming	Esposito	Obburg
Stock embryos B	6400	7700	7000	6300	7000
Fur A	8250	22500	31600	31600	31600

 

I sold both of my loads on Obburg for a handsome profit, and then repeated the exercise of buying stuff and selling it back, which apart from the cost of buying two C-grade stimulants which would sell at a loss here, earned me $14,400. Sadly, these stimulants, though much cheaper to buy in Obburg than Drahew, turned out not to sell for a profit anywhere on the planet, and I sold them for a combined $6,200 loss. But I learned that stimulants are a market drain, and soon after learned that so are biochips and pharmaceuticals.

Eventually, I racked up $120,000, my last big haul coming from a delivery of two loads of hand weapons to Dramming, and I decided it was time to get on with the game. I picked up the cryogens from Esposito, plus some more hand weapons (see Ferengi rule of acquisition #292), brought them to Banville, and took a look at the exchange ticker to see what else was needed; a list of materials unavailable on the planet.

• Rare earths
• Exotic materials
• Woods
• Silichips
• Cadcams
• Synthesizers
• Sunsuns

 

I went back to Dramming to sell my hand weapons for about a $10,000 profit, where I amazingly saw two loads of fur priced at a total of $34,000 which I sold on Obburg for $53,100! With nearly $150,000 in the bank, and the sights of Jondd getting pretty dull, other worlds beckoned.