A short guide on a few ways of trading in Starminer. From trading directly with a station. Having traders come and pick things up that you have listed for sale. Even setting up automation. Along with how to speed things up.

Station Trading

The first method. You just fly out to a station. As long as you are within 1k distance from it, you can open a trade window. The closer you are to the station. The quicker anything you sell will arrive, the quicker you get paid. At some stations, you can even dock up to transfer over resources even quicker.

This, I’m sure, you have used before. It’s a great way to see what a station has in stock, like water. It’s the quickest way to get paid right away. It takes you away from doing other activities to fly to the station which is a big downside.

NPC Trader

The next method is selling to traders. It’s cool to see. It, however, comes with quite a heavy setup cost. You need a gate in the area you are in. I have made my own. You will also notice I have a Hulk node not that far from the gate.

There are two different ways to deal with NPC traders. Regardless of the way you go. They both need easy access to a T2 storage container, such as metals. If anything is near the container, it won’t let you set up a trade.

We can see on my station that I have set up a node away from others. Here I’ve built a T2 metal container. Once it is built, you need to click on it and go to manage storage and add what you want to sell. After that, you need to click on sell storage.

Another way of going about this is to research and craft the T2 shipyard module. Click on the trade ship and have it build a container. You can also send the trade ship out to pick up a container off one of your ships. You then load the container like before. After that, you have to send it to a location such as the Hulk node I have set up next to the gate. Then a trader comes and picks it up.

Automation Trading

For a far superior option than all the ones above. We will check out automation trading next. For this, open the operations interface, which is the tab key by default, and go to the automation tab.

Next, click on create request. If that option is grayed out, click on enable automation on ship.

Now we are going to set up a trade automation order. For this, you need to select where a material is coming from and where you want to send it. Along with the type of material. For things like sending chunks from your mining ships to a refining station. You can select ‘any station’ option. You can also use the ‘all chunks’ option for requesting a resource.

Now the remaining options will determine the frequency of such trades. If you don’t set a condition and just click the set button. It will make the trade once.

If you click on the condition. You can have it set up to send resources, such as if a ship has more than 10 chunks. Make sure to check the repeat option. Just keep in mind that this option can only have one active trade at a time. This means that once a ship is sending 10 chunks to your refining station. It won’t do so again till that trade has finished. You could set up multiple trades with different amounts to get around this limitation.

There is also an option to set a repeat interval. This is the best way to offload loads of silicates to a station or deal with a mining fleet. Since you are maxed out at sending 999 units of an item at a time. You could just set it up to do so every 10 seconds or longer if you like. Then watch as all the resources, such as silicates, get sent slowly away.

While this way is easy to manage lots of resources. Depending on the distance you are sending something. It can take quite some time. Setting up too many of these can also cause lag in the game.

There is also another limiting factor to consider. While my refining station can quickly offload loads of materials. That is because it has 11 of the tier 2 large cargo bays. The more bays you have, the more resources that can be offloaded at once. Things like mining ships and refining stations, you will want lots of cargo bays on. Anything else is usual; just one is good enough.

If, for some reason, you find yourself needing to cancel an automatic trade. Simply open up the operations interface again and go to the automation tab. Then find the trade you want to cancel.

This automation setup is also per area. So if you go elsewhere. Keep in mind you will need to set up automation once again.

Final Thoughts

I personally use automation to ensure water supplies on ships when they get low. Along with buying more water from a station if my refining station is running low. Assuming there is any water left to buy from the station in the first place.

Information

Screenshots were taken, and content was written by @Enjar about Starminer.

Disclosure: Based on the game in early access.