Trade

Template:TNT In RimWorld, colonists can trade with passing trade vessels to sell extra resources and prisoners, and/or buy supplies and slaves.

During the light season, trading vessels will often pass in comms range during a limited time. A message will show up to announce what kind of vessel is in comms range, and a simple notice will tell when the trading vessel is out of comms range (unavailable to trade anymore).

To enable trading, a colony must have at least a powered Comms console. Any colonist can be selected and ordered to engage trading with available vessels by right-clicking on the Comms console. After selecting the trading vessel, the trade screen opens.

This screen is divided between three tabs: Commodities, People and Weapons. Commodities allows the trading of resources, People allows to sell prisoners and buy slaves, and Weapons allows to trade carried weapons. Any weapons or resources to be sold must be placed on a Launch pad stockpile.

A Comms console allows to contact a trade vessel and sell resources, people and weapon. In order to buy from a trader, a colony needs a Drop beacon. Bought items and people will arrive by landing pod inside this area.

Trade tips

• Each trade vessel type has a different range of available commodities, people and weapons. Use the table below to spot the good bargains.
• Colonists with a higher Social skill using the Comms console will negotiate lower buying prices for everything but the Commodities (0.5% per Social skill point).
• Likewise, colonists with a higher Social skill will negotiate for higher selling prices for everything but the Commodities (0.5% per Social skill point).
• Selling a prisoner is profitable, but has a negative impact on the happiness of all the other colonists.
• As of build 213, food can be very quickly grown on Hydroponics tables, which makes it a profitable cash cow provided there's enough manpower to tend to the ever-growing crops.

Trade vessels summary

	Food		Metal		Medikit		Uranium		Shells		Missiles		People		Weapons
	Buy	Sell	Buy	Sell	Buy	Sell	Buy	Sell	Buy	Sell	Buy	Sell	Buy	Sell	Buy	Sell
Farming vessel	$2	$1	$5	$2	$20	$10	$10	$5	✗	✗	✗	✗	✗	✗	✗	✗
Industrial trader	$2	$2	$2	$1	$10	$8	$4	$2	✗	✗	✗	✗	✗	✗	✗	✓
Slave trader	$20	$10	$10	$8	$80	$40	✗	✗	$8	$5	$75	$50	✓	✓	✗	✓
Combat supplier	$5	$2	$2	$2	$20	$10	$5	$4	$4	$2	$19	$12	✗	✗	✓	✓

Buy = Buy from the trader

Sell = Sell to the trader

Optimal trading strategy

You can obtain an essentially unlimited amount of silver by engaging in arbitrage between different vessels (basically: buy low, sell high).

Below are the best buy/sell strategies for each good:

Commodity	Buy from	Sell to	Profit per item	Profit per $1 invested
Food	Farming vessel	Slave trader	8	4
Metal	Industrial trader, Combat supplier	Slave trader	6	3
Medikit	Industrial trader	Slave trader	30	3
Uranium	Industrial trader	Farming vessel	1	1.25
Shells	Combat supplier	Slave trader	1	1.25
Missiles	Combat supplier	Slave trader	31	1.63

• Food is the most efficient relative to the capital: The return on investment is 400%. The only drawback is low unit price of potatoes: To make larger profits, you will need massive food stockpiles (which must be protected from pests) as well as manpower to haul it around. In addition to the silver profit, your large quantity of export food doubles up nicely as an emergency reserve - but on the other hand you may experience supply shocks if you sell too aggressively.
• Metal is also very efficient, with a 300% ROI. As an added bonus, you can skim some of the metal flowing through your trading post for construction projects, to supplement mining and pod drops.
• Medikits are the value-dense alternative to metal and food: You get a lot more profit per item (hence per hauling job and per storage space). These are currently completely orthogonal to your domestic economy, so you don't need to worry about balancing your own economy with trade.
• Uranium isn't very profitable, but it has a very important advantage: All other items must be sold to the slaver, but with with uranium, you can sell to the more frequent farming vessel.
• Shells - same as uranium, except bought from different ship and must be sold to slaver.
• Missiles are similar to shells, but again there is the advantage of being value-dense. At $31 per missile, you need a much smaller quantity of missiles to make the same profit compared to other, more efficient goods like food or metal.

While you are starting out, it makes sense to trade in food since that gives the most ROI. Unfortunately you have to wait for the rare slave ship, so you can also invest in uranium to even out your income flow, at the cost of sacrificing some income in the long run. After trading a couple of times, you will likely amass so much capital that the choice of commodity will become irrelevant - you will have to buy everything the ship has because the limiting factor is now quantity available for sale, not price.

Another very profitable activity is to sell weapons: After defeating a few waves of raiders, you will have enough advanced weapons for all of your militia, and you will begin to amass a very large pile of common weapons like pistols. At $40 a pop, selling a bunch of pistols provides a tidy profit as well, the only drawback is that they will occupy a lot of space on your landing pad (until you sell them).