Introduction

"Hoarding" refers to storing and holding on to trade items as opposed to selling them. Holding items out of Titan's economy can have wonderful results, especially for pirates.

When a business needs an item, some trader somewhere will try to supply it. Lets say you pirate that trader and sell his goods to the destination he was planning to sell at. You get the money (instead of the trader), but the economy of Titan doesn't change overall. The business' need is filled, though not by the original trader.

Hoarding goods upsets this balance. If you pirate the trader and haul his goods back to your hangar, instead of selling them, the business still needs them and will call for another trader. See where this is leading? Repeat with the next trader.

The whole key to getting Titan's economy spinning is to create imbalances. Hoarding and flooding markets are easy ways to make a dramatic impact.

An Example - Sprats

Let's look at how hoarding only one item, Sprats, can effect the entire economy of Titan. Lets say that Psycho Bob's 1 has put out a call for Sprats. You don't know about this, but the AI traders figure it out by looking at the Needs List in Trade Central.

You're cruising around and what you see is a trader carrying Sprats. Yipeee! Good booty. You attack and kill the trader. Now you pick up the booty and take it back to your hangar. You don't sell the Sprats.

Psycho Bob's still needs Sprats, they didn't get the run you pirated. The call is still out. Hang around Psycho Bob's or Downtown Munitions (the nearest manufacturer of Sprats) and kill the other traders trying to sell Psycho Bob his Sprats.

Since few or none of the Sprats are getting to Psycho Bob, he's still offering top dollar for them and the traders keep coming until the munitions shop's supplies are depleted.

At this point, the weapons manufacturers need goods and have money to spend (from the sale of the Sprats you've pirated). Now less valuable, but still fine, booty will be running around to supply the weapons manufacturers to get them to make more Sprats. Whew! Think of the potential of just conering the Sprat market.

Now imagine hoarding everything you get your hands on. This really gets the economy of Titan cranked up. Everyone's out of everything. You can really make a substantial difference in the economy by hoarding. Trading runs at a frenzied pace until there's not much left to trade.

When To Begin Hoarding Booty

Hoarding is not a tactic to employ early in the game. You need to sell goods for cash to get a hangar, better Moth, etc. Before I start hoarding, I get hangars in Downtown, Gamma, and Riverside to hold all of the booty I'll be collecting.

Next, make sure you've got plenty of cash for countermeasures and anything else you might need. You don't want to have to start selling off stuff and breaking your "hoarding pattern".

Make sure that your hangar "Sales System" is off. Don't let anyone touch your stuff. Just keep getting more and more.

When & How To Sell

Eventually, the trading frenzy will slow down. This is due to only a few basic items being available for trade. At this point, you should start selling off your booty. But, don't just sell your stuff in any manner. Sell it with the strategy below to revive trading and begin your hoarding all over again.

Begin your selloff by selling Bodyparts, Trigger, and Matter to trading posts. These "alien" items don't really effect trading very much and can really be sold any time you need some cash.

For the rest of the trade items, begin selling the more basic items first: Chemicals, Pure Water, Ore, Scrap Metal. Next, Sell mid-production items: SheetMetal, ExMetal, Plastics, CompComp. Finish off by selling contraband and any weapons you want to part with.

By selling basic items first, you get trading going again. If you were to supply the high-end items first, there'd be less need for the lower-end items comprising them. You should be quick about selling the rest of your stash before manufacturers can really start producing and traders start trading.

Don't just trade the above to the nearest buyer. Try to pick one buyer and flood him. This keeps the economy unbalanced and forces trading.

Once you've sold your entire stash, and are probably already a millionaire, repeat your hoarding process. Enhance this second cycle of hoarding by buying up high-end items, like weapons, and creating more demand for high-end and mid-production goods. You should have the money to do this kind of thing after your first hoard/sell cycle. Now the traders will be carrying more valuable goods.

Special Items

There are some items that hold a special place in Titan's economy. Below is a discussion on how to treat them.

Food -- Food can be a real pain to sell off. Everyone wants some, but only 5 units at a time. Bars will buy more, but they quickly stock up, too. I begin selling food by fully stocking up the bars. Then, I only carry a few units of food to sell to the businesses I'm selling other goods to.

Alien Stuff -- Trigger, Matter, and Bodyparts can be sold anytime without much effect on the economy except impoverishing the trading posts. These items are what to sell first if you need some quick cash.

Weapons -- If you do a good job of hoarding weapons and keeping supplies low, you'll find out that the AI pilots are suddenly not so well armed. This is especially noticeable with AI pirates.

Unknown Origin -- This is hard to sell because of its high price. Try Reaper's method of buying out a trading post's stock to insure they've got the cash to buy Unknown Origin. This works well in your "hoarding" phase.

A Final Analysis

Hoarding and selling cycles can dramatically increase the amount of trading going on in a game. This provides much better opportunities for both pirates and traders. Pirates really get the better end of this deal, however.

What you're doing in the long run is selling the same items over and over at peak pricing times. Then you pirate the traders carrying the just sold goods and repeat. By keeping the economy unbalanced, you insure that plenty of traders with valuable cargos will be flying around.

The big key is to hoard for a long time and get as much stuff as you can. I'll typically have over a million dollars worth of goods before I begin selling.

The second cycle of hoarding and selling is even more fun because you'll have the money to buy out whole markets. Buying all the missiles on Titan can have the added benefit of limiting the arms available to AI pirates.

After doing this about four or five times, you'll be able to just about predict what trading patterns to watch for right after your next selloff. It just gets easier and easier, and you get richer and richer.

Hammer's Hoarding

Nar Sluke wrote me about a specialized hoarding method developed by he and Hammer. Here's there very successful path to wealth:

Five or six days into a game, Klamp Weapons has a more or less full stock of products. If you buy from there, a Klamp-Trans will soon be along with a load identical to what you bought. If you buy a handful of Devastators, you can equip them and use one on the Trans as it arrives, and the one that follows, and the one that follows that and so on, giving you a literally limitless supply of Devastators without risking you to Klamp Attacks or Patrols.

Furthermore, you can buy other items and pirate those as well. If a Trans slips in selling Devastators, you can re-buy them and start over. This does have the limit that, at a given time, each faction only has five Trans' to keep all of its factories supplied, so they can't devote everything to weapons alone. You can end up waiting around between opportunities.

I didn't know about the "Five Trans" limit. A good thing to keep in mind and a brilliant example of forcing trade by hoarding.

I do a similiar thing to Psycho Bob's that doesn't involve factions. I buy out the missiles at both Psycho Bob's. Independent traders will restock them from the nearest source which is generally Downtown Munitions or a trading post.

I prowl the routes and pirate a fortune. And, they keep coming from Dr. Jobe's and Specialty Arms.

The Economy Of Titan

Piracy

Who Buys What?