Have you ever used this feature? Let me know your experience with it!

You can also buy datapads from stations, the stations refresh every in-game day and sometimes they have datapads with locations of other stations

I actually built my base right next to one of these stations, used pistons and connectors to connect up my massive industrial output right into this station for quick easy money making.

I am astounded that the economy is so unpopular. It's fundamental to how I play the game. 5:05 Its easy to find the stations. The drop pod will have a datepad with a GPS to the closest station on spawn, and stations sell datapads (for like 9 creds per, or something super cheap like that) that will have GPSs for other stations they're friendly or allied with.

The economy system is quite underwhelming for a reason - it is easier and cheaper to mine all resources you need than to trade them. Now what they should do to make it viable is rework the balance of the economy system, in a way that you could profit from trading and that it can become the same endgame as building a huge mining rig. They should balance it to be more like in Elite: Dangerous or in Space Rangers, where trading and contracts are a viable way of making money and buying ships.

More people would use it if you could save a ship design at a station and buy it back (price depending on components + a fee). It would make multiplayer combat a bit more forgiving to newbies in servers and incentivize large factions to pool together money for insurance on large vessels. Put a cool down that's longer dependent on block size and make it expensive enough you can't spam them out and it would take pretty well.

Stations have energy kits and med kits that aren't really available in other places. Useful tools if you are hydro-manning in your suit. I like to use those early game before I have a ship to get Platinum and Uranium from asteroids. AndrewmanGaming is currently in episode 12 of an economy only SE playthrough on KZfaq.

Im really surprised you never used this, as soon as I saw the stations I went there and started doing quests.. Also when you start the game, you will always get a cord to the nearest station in your drop pod you start in on survival.

One thing kinda nice about the economy bases: If they sell data pads, they come loaded with the location of another either same faction or allied economy base. Sometimes you get something close, maybe even on the same planet. Sometimes, you get a remote outpost 28,000 km out in space But the data pads are cheap, and it is a good way to build up a list of economy stations.

Things you missed: cola, coffee, power kits and med kits are like zone chips and plushies: NPC station exclusive. Ever lost a grid and you can't find where it's drifting? Create a search contract. What I would love to see is the ability for a player or player faction to create a bounty. That would rock

In the official keen servers, the economy is actually quite useful, with ships being sold and you *have* to use the economy to get zone chips, for the safe zone. The contracts also give you something to do in the game.

I arrived at the starting trading station on my mobile digging rig, crafted a few batches of resources that station asked me for, and bought myself a Cursor. I liked this little red ship.

suit upgrades would be a nice addition to make the economy worth interacting with

2 weeks ago I started using the Ecomendy system. The first thing I noticed next to the hard-to-find station is that when you try to trade you usually need a small spaceship with a medium or large cargo container to move forward effectively. In addition, a basic refinery and the associated production plant are recommended. And to get ahead faster, a mining ship or even a miner with a cargo container. Which means that you can actually do everything yourself again and don't even want to trade. Thus, the potential of the system is already gone through the problematic entry.

I think every pvp player use it a least for chipzones , it's the only way to prevent raid off . Contracts blocs are also used to create new contract on your ship , accept it and you'll get a moving GPS point like respawn-pod. Can be also used as tracker inside enemy grid (don't forget to hide it on terminal) .

My friends and I found out about the economy by accident. We were playing on Triton and my friend was exploring for ores when he stumbled upon one of these stations. He was telling us that we could do quests to get space credits and buy tools/components and none of us believed him until he took us there. It made getting platinum much less annoying for us since we were pretty early into our game

If you go to the faction tab, each trading faction you have discovered will have a brief description about what they sell. Some sell ships (such as the one in the video) but others can sell other things like ore or components

In my survival world I used the station you start with coordinates for to buy a bunch of uranium before I was capable of mining any. I was able to use that to run my ship for days of gameplay where I would otherwise have needed to spend ton of time gathering ice for hydrogen engines.

I've actually used this feature a whole lot. I engage with the trade stations regularly to get some easy materials from time to time, or to just buy ships I cba to make myself. Edit; I've never had issues finding the trade stations either, their antenna range is kinda insane. Also yeah, there's always 1 you get access to right off the bat via datapad. Edit2; I think maybe adding something inbetween "I use it all the time" and "once or twice" would've given you better results on the poll. I'm fairly confident it isn't as unknown as the poll implied.

The datapad they sometimes sell is basically a advertisement telling someone where another station is, complete with GPS cords.

I just joined a server based on pertam. It's new and not flushed out yet but it's a scavenger type of play style. Refineries and assemblers don't work. When you spawn you get a data pad with the station and a gps location of a nearby abandoned settlement that usually has an old rover and you scrap the rest of the place for your building materials. Progression is reworked a bit. Grinding things down unlocks a smaller catagory of BPs. Settlements spawn based on distance traveled in one direction and the tier of settlement changes based on the amount of blocks/grids you own. After a couple days I just started getting settlements with low defenses where I found a functional h2 tank that was 80% full. Instead of grinding it down I detached it and stuck it on my rover to transport it home. Did the same with a large grid battery since power cells are hard to come by. I think the goal is to get off pertam and they want to make it so that your refineries and assemblers work when you do. But now I like the idea of getting some old rust bucket off pertam and buying a fancy ship from the moon station.

I am very surprised no one uses these stations! I always work towards making a ship doing these contracts. It is mainly late game activity especially with a small server. Plus, keep in mind if you do business with one faction a faction with similar resources will lower there reputation with you. So you need to choose wisely with who you trade with.

I use it sometimes. I said once or twice in your survey as that was the closest answer. The economy is pretty cool. I often play around with mods and self imposed rules and trade stations can help. Especially useful on space starts but can also give you start a boost on any planet. Still of limited use on a regular start unless you spawn close to one.

Bro... Buy datapads at trade stations. They usually sell like 15 at a time. Buy them all. They will reveal GPS locations of their friendly stations. Not all factions are friends with each other. Check the factions tab to see who they are friends with. Visiting other stations and buying their datapads will also reveal even more stations. Some are waaaaaaay out in deep space. Another hint to find other stations: do a hauling contract. Hauling contracts always start at one station, then end at another. Hauling contracts under 6,000 Km will usually bring you to stations on or orbiting planets and moons. Hauling contracts greater than 8,000 Km will pretty much always take you to a deep space space station. Heck, a super fun and challenging way to play the game is salvage/buying only. In other words, NO ASSEMBLERS! It's crazy immersive, and due to how difficult it can be to acquire ammo by only salvaging or buying, it offers a crazy challenge, and requires some creative solutions to disabling enemy ships. I recommend starting with a start that gives you a base and ship right away, like the Pertam Orbiter start.

If you end up with a dead ship, and you can't spawn there it's always good to have a few million to be able to get back to your stuff, without risking being doublecrossed by someone giving you a lift.

I've been using the economy features since it was first added into the game. It isn't central to my playing but it is helpful and gives more things to do. I believe on multiplayer servers you can set up your own store block and put excess items up for sale. Other players can then buy them from your store block. It is possible to do an economy only play through but it can be extremely slow to get going unless you have a speed mod to allow you to fly faster. There are no ore deposits within about a 5 km radius of stations. AndrewManGaming here on KZfaq has such a series going where he set some rules for doing it

I always use these stations, it's basically my first goal in a new game. When you open the seat in your droppod and look at the gps data it contains, it gives you a trade station from the beginning, not always easy to reach but it's basically the first thing you can get, next to a pistol, when starting a new game

From all of the people I play with and talk to in the Xebon community, we all use it pretty much every time. What the station buys/sells is based on the corporation that owned the station. A corp that sells ships will buy more materials, a corp that refines will buy ores and sell ingots. All stations can sell zone chips and things like cola. Its just random on whats in the given list which does update on a built in timer, same with contracts. You will almost always spawn within 10km of a station which is the station on the data pad in your pod seat. Data pads can also be bought from stations with the GPS of other stations. As you said moons are great for finding stations and normally it is easy to find 2 in orbit and 2 on the ground. Doing hauling contracts will give you a parcel that is always put in your personal inventory and an orange GPS labeled "Deliver Here" or something like that, which is always another station. BUT, those missions are in general not really worth the money as they normally are wanting you to jump 25,000km-30,000km, so a dedicated ship is needed and even with some modded jump drives you still need multiple jumps. If you really want to work the ECON system search contracts are east starter contracts but can be so god damn annoying to find sometimes even with a flying vehicle. Acquisition is the king of the contracts once you have some free resources. Me and my friend that I normally group up with start off not taking acquisition contracts below 100,000 SC then that quickly ramps up to nothing below 1mil SC. One trick we use is to build a small platform or ship and either pu tit just outside the shield if you want a station platform or you can nessel a ship with a spawn point next to the NPC station. Then death teleport to the different stations you know of to check for contracts and the store if you are looking for chips. Speaking of Zone Chips are what most players use the ECON system for. Its way to easy to get money from the contracts and buy Zone Chips to fuel a safe zone around your base. Tada! You know have an impenetrable shield and you can turn off damage inside so people in your group that suck at landing can come in at full speed and not give a shit. Also handy for players far away from server dealing with lag when trying to land. When you add in mods like the Build and Repair, and various NPCs you can get them to just stare at you through the shield while you grind them down from safety. Cheese? Yes. But it works, lol. On the current server me and my friend are on we have a large combat salvager/freighter that's job is literally to neutralizer a threat, eat it, then sell its parts. And we are thinking about going pirate now because of how many modded NPC stations are around use that keep spawning and they are from before the ECON update so there old econ system doesn't work with KEEN's.

this is actually what i do when i start a new game of space engineers, generate a world, start on a planet, make a simple buggy and drive around til i find a station, then build a small base next to it and buy/sell things til i have enough to buy a ship... then outfit it as i go, etc etc.

I use this quite a lot. As someone mentioned, you can buy datapads at a trade station that give other trade station locations. Also, you mentioned that the NPC ships could maybe go to a station. Well... They do. At least, the orbital stations. If you sit at one for a while, you will see business shipments, mining shipments, and military ships close with the station, slow down while passing through the safe zone, and then resuming their course. Maybe not every ship does, but if you sit there for a while, they pass through. So others are probably set on courses through other station safe zones.

As you said, the main problem is that you need to travel great distances to find thouse, much greater than to find moust ores. However, if you instal (for example) industrial overhaul mod with its additional ores and changed generation patterns (so the veins are large but only single type ore, also relatively scattered one from another) you end up in situation where you technologies are limited and some elements are scarce. So it becomes viable to mine, process and sell what you can, to buy something that you need.

Other comments mention this, but it is important to note. You can buy a multiple datapads from a station and each one will hate the coordinates of a random Trade station. There a button to take the coordinates printed on the datapad and make a new GPS marker. Also the market and contracts refresh regularly, so if you leave and come back there will be some changes. Though certain stations have patterns in what they sell.

As a solo offline player, the contracts add a level of structure to the game that perfectly balances out the hours of open ended construction and exploration. Just this week I finally tried out a hauling mission as I had finally committed to a save file long enough to build 6 jump drives and enough reactors to recharge them. Also, easiest way to get upgraded tools early without finding precious metals.

I've been finding the stations brilliant for refuelling my hydrogen ships. I go in, sell some materials and can fill a ships tanks up with far less effort and time. If you end up with enough locations and the stations are stocking hydrogen, you can actually make a hydrogen only ship with usable jump drives. Only just found out that it was possible from another youtuber's videos in the last couple of weeks. Turns out that all this time I only needed to select the tanks as the inventory.

i think when they add NPCs to the game they will also add a lot more variety in missions. both combat and delivery. Also it would feel much more lived in if there were actually people walking around the trading stations.

You can also use hauling contracts to send your ship to new stations. Delivering a contract to a new station tells you where to put a new gps point for a station is. The reason some hauling contracts are more expensive is the distance/difficulty of landing reaching the station like at.

I think it would be nice if you could add your own blueprints to the shops and just pay the station to build it for you, with the more complex ships obviously costing a considerable amount of money.

Also you can get tens of millions per acquisition quest if you get lucky getting grav, med, plat or other expensive components

I've used the economy system, but I don't feel like it's currently anything to write home about. The problem is, to really get use of it, you need to have a jump-capable ship, but if you have a jump-capable ship, then technically you've already beat the game.

Wow I'm surprised people didn't know about this... you can also sell stuff on multi-player servers. Also safe zone chips are the exclusive item, they are amazing on PVP servers

I have use the economy system a lot, both in single player and on multiplayer servers. The new Star Trek Continuum server uses a customized economy system to enable new players to get uranium and other things that are not available nearby as the server is designed for exploration so limited asteroids, with uranium and platinum only on a couple far away planets.

If you have economy enabled, your starter pod will have a data chip in the control seat, alt-f10 will also help you find a nearby station. The moons of the star system map also has stations in close proximity of each other. The furthest station I found from the Earth like planet is 43k kilometers.

On server NA2 there is a new player station built by a faction for those new to the server and game to get a leg up. Helps with the progression aspect on survival by giving them access to fully upgraded refineries and assemblers. It is also about twenty or thirty km from npc stations for trading. One important thing to note is that gaining reputation with some npc factions can cause you to go “hostile” with others. The NPC factions show who they are friendly with via the factions tab.

The funny thing is Economy is on by default when creating a new world, but they are so far between that unless you do a LOT of exploring or use the data pad, the chances of actually seeing a station is very slim

fun fact, on my main survival i have (sadly with mods cause i apparently don't know how to play vanilla kekw) i got 180m coins from *just* 1 contract, an acquisition of some reactor components (18), and it was about 23k km away (spoiler yes it was a long trip)

Delivery missions are a great way to find other stations. As the mission is literally take blank to blank. Also you can buy data pads that have station locations coords on them from stations.

I was kinda confused on how it worked when i first found it in the crafting menu, and tried building one on my own base and saw that nothing came up. I get now that you go to stations to pick up contracts and sell, and you build it on your own station to create contracts (not sure) and buy. Neat!

The economy features definitely have their place. One useful use of them in the early game is to get a hold of thruster components / platinum (you can buy a ship and grind it down for those parts in a pinch, too) if you're having trouble finding a platinum deposit. They're also a renewable source of resources (!) which doesn't matter that much in this game, but it *is* handy that you can "convert" raw stone into a variety of materials by trading at stations in a pinch if you need to make some fast modifications to a ship or something.

Fun fact, you get the coords to a trade station in your drop pod seat alongside your gun and ammunition, at least on earth you do. I have always used this feature, it's so integral to singleplayer play, or even co-op play. Me and my friends wouldn't be able to stay interested in the game at all if it weren't for econmoy.

the items available at the stations depend on the type of faction that controls them. for example a faction called "Space Miners" will have mostly ores and drills while "Intergalactic builders" will have ships and welders for sale. bonus info: if you do trading and contracts for a faction you will improve standing with that faction and its allies. and worsen standing with their enemies.(usually all factions who are not allies) you can see who is allied to who in the Factions tab

An economy only game is kind kind of playable (I've done several). Basically, you need to way to collect resources to sell for starting out like mining or pirating. The other way to do it is to give yourself a mission ready ship, which I've found kinda defeats the purpose unless you restrict yourself to something super basic.

I do use this feature from time to time. To find more stations, you can buy datapads at those stations and they have other trading stations, but they can be quite far. So when I want to find more, I buy all the datapad at the station and check them sometime there is one or 2 near

Objection, Plushies come in those random drop pods everyone ignores.

Rapid ship repair would be nice. You pay a premium for a short repair and rearm of your ship as opposed to welding up every block yourself

With very little effort, Keen could add more to this. Like the datapad you start with, they could sprinkle information around and maybe offer more rewards. Like, you do a Search quest or retrieve something they lost and you get the location of a mineral deposit. This might be really helpful for players looking for that ONE resource that they can't seem to find any of.

In vanilla game I don't use the economic system, however, with Industrial overhaul mod the trade stations gave you acces to resources that you wouldn't be able to get for a long time. Also, if you play on Agaris you will have more trade stations on the planet and they are easy to find thanks to the roads that leads to them.

I actually do use it. I usually do one mission to have some bank of credits and sometimes when I am building something and I find out that I ran out of a resource to make something I need, rather than flying there with my mining ship, mine for 10 minutes, then fly back and process the ore. I just hop into my speeder and buy that thing which takes much less time. I always build my bases where it is pretty, not where it is convenient and I play with Scarce resources mod so using economy makes a lot of sense for me. I think scarce resources should be part of the game (maybe a toggle in advanced settings of the world that is toggled on by default) and not just a mod.

It would be neat if there were npc ships that occasionally fly by, and occasionally a fight might break out between them. It would be neat to watch two ships attack a small, defenseless one, and once the victim ship falls, hopping in a vehicle to go scrap parts from it. It would make the game feel more dynamic, and would be an actual reason to use weapons on ships.

I will buy an abundance of prefab throwaway ships or even some of the bigger ships like the B60 hauler because they are good enough, quick, modifiable, and you can just give one to a friend if you don’t feel like building them a ship and they need a ship for something

Mostly newb here: I'm actually planning on abusing the hell out of the economy system as soon as I build some decent transportation.

I have used the economy station few times, does helps by getting the better tier tools and resources. would be challenging to only buy stuff from economy station to progress on. there's something if there's mod for these function: like buy tech licence/s to unlock new blocks to build and buy extended limited blocks (example: thruster limit to 16 from start (4 up, 4 down, 2 left strife, 2 right strife, 2 front and 2 rear) to add additional 4/6 thrusters on any facing. wheels limited to 4 additional 2 more per purchase) also buying the land area to build the base or to mine resource otherwise reputation will cost you and possibility someone (npc) coming to destroy your new base and kill you. buy the entire planet what would be a hell a lot of credit to save up for :D Would love to see if that challenge set up

the biggest problem is the economy really sucks for most players, and it's only existence is as something we might be forced to use to get components as a "balance" measure on some servers, not to mention the massive spread between stations, and the lackluster stock of ships, making trade rather unexciting... not to mention players being unable to drive the economy because the game itself forces players to sell and buy around pre-determined price ranges.

The only time I use the ATM is to turn physical space credits I get from signals into non physical ones when I’m playing on a server that is using economics, safer since no one can touch our cash that way

Yes, I have used this. If you start without a ship or without any kind of survival kit, this is the best way to get a start. Possibly the only way to get started until you can build a Survival Kit.

I once went to a trading station and saw a contract that gives 20 million space credits for 15 reactor comp. It was the easiest 20 million space credits i've ever made

6:10 I think it would go a long way for immersion to include NPC text messages when in radar range, wouldn't be too costly in terms of dev I think, and would be a great addition. I always felt like this game lacks lore and overall doesn't talk to players enough (aside from goodbot which is really basic controls stuff). Maybe receiving a distress call with an actual message (that you could read from your HUD or even retrieve and display on a LCD panel with a script) would incentivize players to investigate planet surfaces and whatnot

Because I am a wrenched builder I always go for the premade ships in the economy. I used it when it came out because of the challenges of the missions. Right now on my current game I am working my way to a station, (i crashed in the mountains and the rover I have built is having a hard time getting to the first station). Quests are always valued in ;difficulty. a low payout escort means you may fight a few drones, where a higher payout one will have more enemies. The find quests are the easiest way to make credits and are always best to grab once you have a smell ship. Some servers have resources set to nil and are economy, or salvage only. I was surprised by your results that more people do not know about it, But SE always was a building game first and the economy update came in so late in the game development that it must have been ignored.

first thing I do everytime I start new is figure out where the nearest station is. they are a easy way to get uranium to power your reactors you just got to do some missions. when you spawn you always have data pad you just copy the nav data. then you can buy data pads that give you nav points to others. and trade missions will take you to others

What I would really like is the ability to buy ship blueprints through the economy. The community blueprints from the workshop I've subbed to being purchasable/traded for would be fun for the saves I have played that were more focused on progression/harder survival.

Andrewmangaming did an economy only play through that seemed a bit fun. Personally I love doing some of the missions. But agree it's hard to find a reason outside of just making money or having fun. I would love more trader only items. Give you more insensitive to do work and get into favor with them. I'd even be down for needing to buy blueprints for a better progression system. Or have things like modules need trader only parts. Could add in jump drives gravity generators and a lot of the high end stuff. Also yes I believe stations need to be a bit more common. But you can buy more datapads with locations on them at some stations

You can play, without mining ore, i tried it. Its difficult, but managable. You get some resources from unknown signals or being a pirate. Or simply: buy ore from the station, produce parts and sell it or fullfill quests to the same station, you gain surplus ;)

I use this to get rich every server I join because each station has asteroids nearby that sometimes turn out to be a good load

I use this as part of my regular game play you can turn off the unknown signals and just rely on the stations but if i do that then i start fresh until i get a station closer than 30 klicks that is from a mining faction as they will almost always have ores for sell and sometimes you can get uranium and platinum in bulk. They are definitely geared toward mid to late game but some like the miners can be very helpful from the start.

I remember frequently searching for NPC stations but never finding them, I had no idea they were orbiting the moon. Thanks for making this video, I'll have to check this out.

If you want to open a store. You have to fill the vending machine with stuff. Cyanide made a giant potrait of himself and power the safe zone to forever.

I use the economy fairly regularly, and often point out that it's a great way for players who want to start with a bit more challenge than normal, to actually be able to start with almost nothing and actually survive without needing to build a scenario or a starter ship/base. Doing the search missions is a quick way to earn enough credits/faction to buy starter (or even intermediate) ships with maybe 1 to 2 hours of effort. Trading components will net better returns if you're finding you have a lot of raw resources to process, but trade missions can pay out a LOT of credits if you have a ship able to get to you to the destination. If you want to do an economy only style, try using the Aww Scrap mod (no components returned when grinding, just component scrap) so you'll only get a portion of the materials back as scrap, and only a portion of the resource back from the scrap lol That combined with the advanced welding mod (allows you to disconnect blocks from the grid using a grinder, and reattach them using a "weld pad") gives the game a very different feel for SE :D

Best paying missions I've seen are acquisitions for magnesium powder and gravity components. Those can get you over 20 million credits. also selling refined ores at the stores can get you millions.

People ask me why I need 30 jump drives in my ship. The answer is because I'm a jump addict, and my ship can do >22,000 Km jumps. Yeah, I can do many of the hauling contracts in ONE jump, and the longer ones just take 2 jumps. I can jump from Pertam to Alien, and back to Pertam in ... get this... ... 20-25 seconds. And I still have enough jump capacity to jump to Earth or Mars. When doing shorter jumps, I don't even have to wait for my jump drives to recharge. I can lose people so fast. Do a 100 Km jump in one direction, a 1,000 Km jump in another direction, and then a 5,000 Km jump in yet another, all within 30 seconds, making pursuing my ship damn near impossible. Also means when I'm ready to log out, I just jump 20,000 Km into deep space, park inside an asteroid, and shut off my coms to go dark. Can't get locked on to by any ships that stumble on by. No need for shields. All this was because of the economy update, which made me build a series of jump ships specifically to do those hauling missions. Been a jump addict ever since. Even with over 1M Kg of cargo, I can still jump over 16,000 Km in a single jump. This is the way.

I've always used the economy features since getting the game back on February, I tend to think those who play on PvP servers like myself rely on the economy massively to sustain our safe zones. *Tip:* do the acquisition contracts to save you the pain of doing hauling contracts in a expensive jump ship that will only be used for hauling contracts

Once the update came out for xbox I delved deep into it, turned the sandbox building crafting game it already was into a exploring and mission game added onto it all. I went into a different game mode of just using basically economy mechanics to get my stuff and ships. To a point. Starting out with simple beginnings as a solo start up company focused on mining. Unsurprisingly raw resources turned out to be valuable assets for many so my company went into weapon and defense research and development to maintain control of plots theyd paid for already and to safely transport and refine. Hauling needs alot of cargo space, and fast acceleration and brakes. You're right about it being basically end game content if you'd like more stuff to do. Acquisition is the best money maker. Gravity components and rare ores usually make great profit. Best yet they're not timed. Every other contract is timed or triggered, I think. Search sounds easy, and sometimes it is, but for me, majority of the time it was down right not rewarding for the time spent. Better to get an easy and cheap Acquisition contract and mine or make extra for yourself. Protection contracts... those are usually the most fun due to the action involved, but also for me the most preparation needed. They are and can be very serious tests of your skill and ship's agility, firepower, and armor. Put on relative dampeners to your client and I usually did a torsion circle around the client to reduce the relative difficulty. Never tried simply locking onto the client and shielding him or wrapping him in armor and turrets walls. All this was tested offline. Edit ps: data pads are cheap af. I usually buy the full stack of data pads of first station that'll sell them. I originally thought they were notes for multi-player. These datapads give GPS coordinates to other stations. Very good for getting that one pesky shop that sells uranium ingots.

Also a tip, if you want to know what each trade station sells, check. The faction menu tells you what each of them sell.

I've used it ever since it was added to the game, but it really needs to be expanded. The problem is it cannot be modded, and you can't easily move the stations, which are not supposed to be moved. As for other things in the game that most people don't use, the tool that a few people have used to make detailed movies like you see in the background while you are in the main menu. Also the camera pathing feature to add cut scenes to your playthrough. there are so many things they don't describe how to use, they just add them and leave it to you to figure them out. I bet you could create a multi-mission storyline complete with cut-scenes, but they haven't really given us much info to make it happen.

An economy-only series would certainly be interesting

I've been playing since multiplayer was added and I've only recently completed a build using timer blocks for something useful (auto closing doors). Idk how many people use timer blocks regularly but I'd be happy to see some easy, not complicated uses that I could put on any build :)

The reason why is because it is always easier to build your own ship than it is to go through the economy. There is a youtuber who did an economy only playthrough and the second he allowed rescorce production (self made/imposed rules) he was able to buy a ship within 1 episode (there were 9-10 before). Added on to the difficulty of actually affording anything rather than mining it is the fact that the ships are not purpouse built. The easiest fix is bringing the time invested between the mining and economy systems MUCH closer, untill then there is little to no reason to use it other than the zone chips (plushies for asthetics).

There is a mod which integrates additional components, which lets you build better blocks (a better battery for example), three different tiers. These components are only available by trading. Thats makes that trading system valuable. (Mod is called "Tiered Tech Blocks")

I've been saying this since the Economy update first dropped, but Keen missed a major opportunity but not adding any of the new ships from that update to the random spawn list. So much new stuff made but practically unused.

One of my goals when making my Transition Drive mod was to improve the economy in some way. Sure, there's Zone Chips, but people generally don't even use them because the cost/benefit ratio is shit. I basically made a jump drive that uses fuel. The fuel can only be found on select planets and it's difficult to mine. Trade stations have contracts for it, and they sometimes sell it, making deep space trade stations the only way of getting fuel without going to a planet. Still, the mod is just a tiny nudge in the right direction. Players should spawn with all the NPC station coordinates already visible and the rewards for missions should be increased a lot, not to mention creating reasons to even want to go to an NPC station in the first place.

Every single one of my playthroughs revolve around the economy systems

I used the economy all the time, so not to buy ships but occasionally to get the elite equipment and to sell common resources for more rarer resources that I need because I play with a mod that makes it where planets only have the basic resources and you have to go to space in order to get them more rare resources

I used it all the time when it came out, those batteries and medpacks are very useful, and it’s a great way to get extra resources if you’re in need of quick repairs far away.

I actually used this in a world with no speed limit to slingshot thru gravity between stations selling stuff

I’m so shocked a lot of people didn’t know about these xD I discovered these within an hour of returning to the game after playing it back in early alpha days. I used them extensively while re-learning the game (buying platinum on a planet before you can go to space is pretty useful, etc.) But that enthusiasm didn’t last long, as soon as I got used to the game again, I don’t think I’ve stepped into a station or had interest in going there to do quests :D

Just add a shipyard where you can with help of credits almost instantly build the ship from your blueprint and resources. It ll give us a choice will you build your ship by yourself or just buy it ready to go.

Going to the economy station indicated by the Datapad on spawn to get a leg up is pretty much a staple in my survival game strategy before I go off planet. Usually do a couple of hand-ins for cash to trade in for ressources I couldn't find until then. Though once I get off the planet I only rarely use them anymore as they're a pain to find unless you happen to stay near the earthlike moon. Sadly most stations I visited didn't sell any datapads to find others either. Most I ever ran into on a single run was 4 stations I think.

I've tried some contacts, but most of the more lucrative ones you have to have a jump drive to complete in time.

I use it extensively with ore mods, like Scarce Resources and the like. Just start on Mars where there's no cobalt. Best way to find stations is to go to the first one on your pad, buy more pads, go from there. I've found three on a planet easily several in orbit or near moons. This is actually one of my favorite features of the game.

Several mods make use of this feature, the daily needs mod for example allows you to buy food and seed packets in the vending machines.

You can also find plushies in the unknown signal pods. I've got 20 in my solo world and I've not used the economy stuff yet.

I'm using it and it helps a lot because the "nearby" station have platinum, I did a few acquisition contracts and got enough for some 64 platinum ingots, my small grid hauling ship is now space capable without the need of hydrogen. Anyhow if I remeber correctly, not every trade station sells platinum or uranium, which would make them much more attractive. What I'd improve would also be the hauling contracts, make a few to transport from one station to another on the same planet would make me want to do them more often and earlier.