X4 Tutorial – Getting Started With Trading

Buying your first transporter

Once you have acquired about 300.000 credits you should be able to buy your first transporter; however an upgraded transporter may cost you 6-700.000 credits. You need to explore the map and find a Wharf, where you can buy small and medium sized ships. Make sure to place a satellite near the Wharf in order to be able to buy ships remotely (see image to the right).

Select a Wharf in the map, right-click and select Buy Ships to buy a new ship.

From the top menu select Size M ships and choose whatever Transporter you like (the image below is a Mercury Vanguard from the Wharf in Argon Prime.

Hint: There are also derelict ships (including transporters) to be found which you can then capture fore free, so make sure you explore every section! Also make sure to pay attention to messages from all your other ships, as some of them may have found such a derelict ship - click the Player Information in the top most map menu and then select the Logbook tab to the left to see details about where the derelict ship was found.

Equipping your new transporter

If you have a limited amount of credits, you can select the Minimum Preset which is OK for getting started - you can always dock the ship at a Wharf or Equipment Dock and upgrade it later.

If you can afford it, I recommend that you upgrade your new transporter to at least:

  • Engines: Travel Mk2
  • Shield Mk2
  • Turrets: Pulse Mk1 is cheapest but I prefer Bolt Mk1 which is only a little more expensive
  • Assign at least a couple of marines and service crews.

The Travel Mk2 engines will allow your ship to travel much faster so you can do more trades and earn more credits.

Shields Mk2 and turrets are necessary to protect your ship and cargo from pirates and Xenon attacks.

You should assign some marines to all your ships; that way they can claim any derelict ship they may find when travelling. Also hire as many service crew members as you can afford - your ship will work more efficient and find better trades as its crew gets more experience but the number of crew members also have an impact on ship efficiency.

Select your ship in the map and then right-click anywhere in the map and select Auto-Trade (Galaxy) to instruct your transporter to begin trading in the entire galaxy or Auto-Trade in <sector name> to trade only in the local sector.

Hint: To reduce the risk of your cargo being stolen or your transporter being blown up by pirates, consider assigning a fighter escort. After you have equipped your fighter with whatever engine, shield, weapons etc. simply select the fighter in the map (or in the list in the Property Owned window) and then right-click on your transporter and select [Default Role] Defend to order your fighter to follow and protect the transporter.

You can change how many sectors your trader will fly to buy and sell wares by selecting the ship, right-click and select Information; drag the Max gate distance to buy and Max gate distance to sell to define you long your trader should be allowed to travel for each trades - if you set it to a high value, the trader may find some better deals, however the traveling time increases so you may want to experiment to find the sweet spot.

Notice: As your crew gains experience and rank up, they will be able to travel longer looking for trades.

Also notice that you can restrict which wares the trader is allowed to trade. For instance you can remove any illegal wares from the list to reduce the risk of getting stopped by the police (however, selling illegal wares may be better profit than legal wares). Or if you experience problems with selling certain wares you can simple remove them from the list to avoid your trader buying that stuff again. Simply click the X to the right of the ware name to remove it from the list - or click the Add Wares button below to add a new ware to the trading list.