Pathways Guide
The Path of Commerce
There are 3 paths of commerce you can follow:
The Path of Commerce - Building a materials business
Deciding on what to sell is not easy. Early on, you should explore and meet your
neighboring empires. You should ask them what they need and
try to find out what various items sell for. To get started, you can
sell any extra raw or finished materials you have left over from your
initial build out.
The easiest business to get started is selling raw and finished materials. You
are already in a good situation to produce these items. Of course, so is every
other empire that is just starting out. If you can find a more advanced player
that is focused on more advanced tasks, such as building starships or
satellites for sale, you might be able to sell them the raw or finished
materials they need. Building a starship takes a lot of resources and they
probably can’t get enough to make what they are building.
In general, you want to make partnerships with other players. Establish Trade
Alliances to ensure you have regular customers for your wares and if possible,
establish a Mutual Defense Alliance with a stronger player. You will most likely
need to pay for this protection, but it will be well worth it if a nearby empire
tries to expand by force. Your shuttle is the most valuable item you will have
for quite a while. Without a Mutual Defense Alliance, your shuttle will be easy
prey. If you lose your shuttle, you will be in a world of hurt.
The Path of Commerce - Building a product business
After building up a
customer base and a reserve of credits you can start to think about selling high
value items such as starships, tanks, satellites, etc… These are finished items
or products that don’t need any further processing, but require a lot of
materials to build. As you discovered, there is profit in selling raw and
finished materials. However, there is even more profit in selling finished items
such as starships.
As you did with your raw and finished materials
business, you should explore the galaxy and find out what different empires need
in the way of starships, tanks, satellites, etc, and what they are willing to
pay for them. You may be able to find an empire that is willing to make a
commitment to buy a specific type of unit if you build it. This type of
situation is what you are looking for. It allows you to make the necessary
investment in infrastructure and material knowing that you will be able to sell
what you're making. Later on, you can take the risk of building a high value
unit that you don't have a buyer lined up for yet.
Finished items are
built in Workshop, Factory or Manufacturing Plant improvements. If you decide to
make finished items (units), then you should start constructing the Workshop
improvement and then upgrade it to a Factory or Manufacturing Plant as soon as
you can. You will want to maximize your manufacturing ability as early as
possible.
As you build up your manufacturing ability, you can move up to
selling bigger and more valuable units. However, as you probably know by now,
finding enough raw materials to build what you want to make is a challenge. At
this point, you may want to start colonizing other uninhabited planets and use
them as a source of raw materials for your main manufacturing operation. If you
have good suppliers of raw materials then you might not want to do this since
managing another planet or two is time consuming and may distract you from your
main business.
However, even if you don't colonize uninhabited planets
for raw materials, you will eventually want to expand your manufacturing base.
There is only so much that a single planet can produce and eventually you will
want to expand further. This will require colonizing other planets.
Planets can
be acquired in three ways: claim an uninhabited planet, capture a planet in war
or buy a planet from another player. Most likely you will claim an uninhabited
planet by landing a ground unit (settler or tank) on the planet. Once this is
done, you will need to build up its infrastructure just like you did on your
home planet. Remember that any new planets you colonize can be taken from you in
war. Only your home planet cannot be taken. So once you start expanding your
empire, good defenses are recommended.
The Path of Commerce - Building a service business
If selling materials
or products is not to your liking, you may want to try building a service
business. A service business does not provide tangible items for sale but
instead offers assistance to other empires so they can focus on their core
operations. Examples of service businesses in Galactic Pathways are settler
training, starship repair and entertainment.
Every empire will need some
or all of these services. However, building the infrastructure to provide these
services takes a lot of resources and most empires will want to focus on
something else. Thus there is an opportunity for some empires to focus on
providing services to others.
Once you build your service
infrastructure, preferably a 2nd or 3rd level improvement (College or University
for example) your main concern will be attracting enough customers to keep
credits flowing your way. You can do this through placing ads in the Galactic
Classifieds and establishing a solid reputation.
One key point to
remember is that your improvements only function when you are logged in. Thus
if another empire is using your facilities, you must remain logged in to service
them. For example, if an empire drops off a starship to be repaired in your
repair improvement, the starship will only be repaired while you are logged
in. This provides you an opportunity to give excellent service. If you are
servicing another empire's starship or training their settler, make sure to
finish before logging out or at least warn your customer that you may be logging
out soon.
One you establish a good reputation, empires from across the
galaxy will come to you.
Infrastructure Building |
Commerce |
Peacemaker |
Mercenary |
Pirate
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