Merchant/Trade Simulation Games

[The Funslinger]

I've got a hankering for them. If anyone knows any good ones, preferably free, but not necessarily, send them my way.

I wouldn't mind something that puts me with a wagon or some shit just sending me around buying and selling and whatnot.

 

[IllumInaTIma]

I can think of one, Recetear on Steam. Adorable little game where you play as adorable little girl responsible for maintaining her own stote

 

[The Funslinger]

I can think of one, Recetear on Steam. Adorable little game where you play as adorable little girl responsible for maintaining her own stote

Yeah, I've heard of that, and it does sound interesting.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I haven't actually tried it (although the third game has been tied to my steam account ever since I got it in a Steam bundle a couple of years ago), but the Patrician series seems to be kind of a macro scale merchant simulation, running a merchant fleet in the age of exploration, rather than being in charge of a single ship or store. Might be worth looking into.

There's also Elite and its many descendants, like the X series. Fly a spaceship, buy and sell goods. Or go pirate/bounty hunter/military if you want to and you're good enough.

 

[The Funslinger]

I haven't actually tried it (although the third game has been tied to my steam account ever since I got it in a Steam bundle a couple of years ago), but the Patrician series seems to be kind of a macro scale merchant simulation, running a merchant fleet in the age of exploration, rather than being in charge of a single ship or store. Might be worth looking into.

There's also Elite and its many descendants, like the X series. Fly a spaceship, buy and sell goods. Or go pirate/bounty hunter/military if you want to and you're good enough.

What would you say is the best X series game?

 

[Fractral]

I haven't actually tried it (although the third game has been tied to my steam account ever since I got it in a Steam bundle a couple of years ago), but the Patrician series seems to be kind of a macro scale merchant simulation, running a merchant fleet in the age of exploration, rather than being in charge of a single ship or store. Might be worth looking into.

There's also Elite and its many descendants, like the X series. Fly a spaceship, buy and sell goods. Or go pirate/bounty hunter/military if you want to and you're good enough.

What would you say is the best X series game?

Get Albion prelude, and then go play Terran Conflict if you're interested in the back story. TC also has the best fights in the series, at the end of the Balance of Power and Final Fury missions. Don't play Reunion or any of the older games except if you really want to experience the story; they've aged horrendously.
But look up a guide first; they're complicated and unforgiving games at the best of times, and have a pretty bad interface, though it's better than it was in X2.

 

[Confidingtripod]

free flash game: http://www.kongregate.com/games/ArmorGames/frontier?acomplete=frontier

its a little fun and might tide you over till you decide on one of the other suggestions, any that I'd recommend have already been said

 

[MrWunderful]

Does assassins creed 3 count? Just kidding.

I also recommend anything from the Elite series.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Given how obsessive some people have gotten over its various unlocks and cosmetics, I'd say Team Fortress 2 might as well be an economic simulator.

http://tf2finance.com/

I cannot in good consciousness endorse this type of behavior, though. In my experience, any type of prolonged exposure to traders in TF2 is hazardous to one's mental state.

You might want to check out Wing Commander: Privateer. It's an old game with dated visuals, but the gameplay still holds up. You're the pilot of a cargo ship, and it's up to you to decide how you make a living in the galaxy (merchant, smuggler, pirate or bounty hunter). There's all sorts of upgrades you can purchase to increase your ship's effectiveness, or you can even buy a better ship once you accumulate enough money.

You can buy the game for six dollars from Good Old Games.

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/wing_commander_privateer

 

[TrevHead]

If you can be bothered with a sub, Eve Online is the ultimate traders game imo, you don't even need to bother with combat to play it's trading gameplay or even undock.

 

[Weaver]

IMO the Anno series is where it's at! 2070 was good and 1404 (Dawn of Discovery in North America) was excellent as well.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I haven't actually tried it (although the third game has been tied to my steam account ever since I got it in a Steam bundle a couple of years ago), but the Patrician series seems to be kind of a macro scale merchant simulation, running a merchant fleet in the age of exploration, rather than being in charge of a single ship or store. Might be worth looking into.

There's also Elite and its many descendants, like the X series. Fly a spaceship, buy and sell goods. Or go pirate/bounty hunter/military if you want to and you're good enough.

What would you say is the best X series game?

I've never actually played any of them, because they followed in the footsteps of the Elite sequels (Frontier: Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters), which I didn't like because of the properly simulated Newtonian physics. For my money, the best game in the genre would be either Elite itself, or Wing Commander: Privateer, which someone mentioned above. Privateer even has a fan made re-make that's pretty cool, and is available completely free of charge.

You can get every port of the original Elite here (don't worry, it's legal -- that's the home page of one of the two guys who created the game), and you can get the Privateer re-make <link=http://privateer.sourceforge.net>here.

 

[Ryotknife]

I haven't actually tried it (although the third game has been tied to my steam account ever since I got it in a Steam bundle a couple of years ago), but the Patrician series seems to be kind of a macro scale merchant simulation, running a merchant fleet in the age of exploration, rather than being in charge of a single ship or store. Might be worth looking into.

There's also Elite and its many descendants, like the X series. Fly a spaceship, buy and sell goods. Or go pirate/bounty hunter/military if you want to and you're good enough.

What would you say is the best X series game?

Just go with Albion prelude: shady business or wait until X:Rebirth comes out.

X: Terran Conflict and Albion are NOT save game comatible even though its practically the same damn game with a few changes. Albion prelude has more PROFIT potential with its stock market, but TC has EASIER ways to set up a business because the abandoned ships are not randomized like in Albion.

The abandoned ships get a pretty penny, and make you millions to kick start your business.

So its either work hard to get a business manually and get huge amounts of profit from stock markets, or have an easier way of setting it up. Its all trade off.

I hear Terran Conflict has the player HQ and Albion prelude doesn't. Though the HQ isn't that useful beyond painting your ship from what I seen. Its a nice building though.

I haven't gotten far in Albion because I didn't want to lose my progress in Terran Conflict. I invested too much into that game to start over from scratch JUST for a stock market. Without the kick starter of vehicles, I don't have the patience to invest another 100+ hours to get my stuff back. The X series is notoriously slow paced, and there are rumors X: Birth makes it faster so you don't have to let it run over night with time compression on to get any real money.

The player HQ (and HUB) are back in albion prelude.

although both plotlines are kinda disappointing as they are both very quick. Im only 50 hours into my AP game (with an overtuned hyperion vanguard!) and ive already completed both plots.

Hell, not having to worry about random kh'aak attacks is nice. I remember the first time going after a cluster.

"pffft, its just one ship how hard can it poss-OH GOD THERE ARE LIKE 50 OF THEM!"

Making money is not.....too hard. With the war you can make a pretty buck grabbing dropped missiles or weapons from destroyed fleets. I started with poisoned paranoid which had me collect 25 million in 72 hours in order to get a faster hyperion. Completed it within 24 (game) hours. Plus it seems like they added a bunch of new ships in the update.

Just be warned...to anyone in general...bombers and especially missile frigates are the new bosses in the game. Missile frigates can destroy all life in a sector with a push of a button, unleashing thousands of missiles at once (and a single one can either destroy or heavily damage most ships)

They also made out of system combat a hell of a lot more fair, and made laser towers tougher.

 

[Ryotknife]

I heard about the missile trick, but frankly running around during battles is liable to get me killed, not only that but it takes a shit load of time to get to Omnicron Lyrae from Argon prime with my discoverer. I've been making due with the energy cell trade right now, and it sucks.

Normally I get abandoned ships, sell them, and build stuff like a solar collector in heron's nebula with like a credit off the standard price of energy cells. Go to the top of the sector, hit the time compression, go to bed, and wake up a rich man.

If I get a ship with trading software to buy the best priced quantum tubes, Its a pure money maker.

One thing is miss from Terran Conflict is the steam unlock from the summer sale, the harmony of Perpetuity sector that gives a 400% bonus to energy cell production and a free solar collector station. As far as I know, its not an albion prelude unlock yet.

Edit: wait, the hub? The one where you have to get a crap load of resources to build a Deus Ex machina and takes players months to complete with large trading networks? How did you finish it in 50 hours?

Harmony is back in the game, although not a good idea to start a factory complex there (or near ominicron) as it is within the warzone. You start building solar power factories there, and the terrans are liable to drop a fleet (with carriers, destroyers, and frigates) on you and destroy it. I will admit, the war is kinda...disappointing. Hell, you cant even help during the big fleet battles as there is a script which will spawn a fleet JUST because you are there (and the fleet is significantly bigger and more powerful than you, meaning your presence is actually hurting the war).

As for the hub, you need significantly fewer resources this time around (like 10k meatsteaks, 15k stott spices, 10k BoFu) and....that's pretty much it. Apparently Bali Gi is a grade A douchebag because he actually didn't need most of the resources you gave him in TC, in fact they had to throw most of it out.

Oh, you do have to connect one of the gates between a terran sector and a heavy xenon sector which was....fun times. Nothing like a few xenon frigates and destroyers showing up, especially since one of the hub links to Kingdom End, near where I setup my factory complex in Abigone Memorial.

Oh, almost forgot. Stealing ships is both harder and easier. Boarding is harder as it seems that most corvettes and above now have marines. However, stealing ships from the "retrieve my ship" missions offsets this. Beforehand if you captured the stolen ship and didn't return it, you would take a MASSIVE reputation hit. Now you either take no hit or a small hit, BUT it spawns police on you to destroy your ship. If you destroy the police, then you take a massive hit AND they spawn a large ass fleet to take you out. However, if you are friendly with say....the Yaki pirates, you can park your stolen vehicle in one of their ports and let the pirates take care of the police for you.

Ive gotten 8 corvettes and 2 frigates this way so far.

Plus the Albion Prelude plot gives you pretty good rewards. A heavy Centuar corvette, 3 Defa-Cade heavy fighters (fully equipped), prototype Aagamon heavy fighter....and I think the Albion Pride corvette...although that is a piece of crap.

 

[DoPo]

If anyone knows any good ones, preferably free, but not necessarily, send them my way.

Not free and not necessarily good but Spells of Gold. It's on Green Man Gaming and maybe somewhere else, too. Frankly, it's not worth the full price they are asking - it costed about as much when I got it new quite a few years ago (2004-ish, IIRC), although it seems that it's now 75% off so there is that. The game is not awful, mostly mediocre with some bad parts (the animations were rather wooden as I recall, for example) but it has its interesting bits. It's an ARPG where you can level up in three areas - combat, magic and trading. And that was interesting - you can just go kill a bunch of monsters but you could also go and trade between cities trying to find a deal. I recall it was actually not bad a mechanic, and there was some other things like deities and bonuses - something like, if you pray to the god of trade you get a bonus to selling value but it runs out, so you would have to travel faster and probably shorter distances. Something like that.

So it had some redeeming qualities. But was average overall. If you have the £2.50 to waste, it's not too bad to waste them on it but also, you could waste them somewhere else. Don't buy it for much more than that, though, I don't think it's worth it.

There is also Freelancer which is much better and more engaging, though the trading aspect isn't the best out there, it's at least entertaining. You fly a spaceship and you can buy stuff from one place to sell them on another planet or even in another system. Presumably for profit. The space flight was rather nice and you'd need to plan your routes but also try to avoid pirates. Though, it's worth noting that you can also try not trading but rather doing missions or just killing pirates, or even exploring and scavenging remains/asteroids for money. You could even join the pirates, I believe - rob the rich and give to yourself.

There is a demo of Freelancer, it's worth a look. The full game is basically the same but much bigger.