1. Introductory Data
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IGH specification: Although a number of manufacturers have supported a whole range of IGH motors, it is recommended you remain loyal to Xexor/Hikan who provide the standard hyperspace transit drives. Asteroid mining lasers Asteroid mining involves the fitting of fuel scoops and special mining lasers to your ship. Ships which always carry them are known as ‘Belters’. They search for asteroids and, on finding one, use the laser to fragment it into pieces sufficiently small to be taken into the cargo bay. Mining lasers specification: Kruger Model ARM64 Sp. Mining laser is highly recommended as both a trade and combat addition. Uses variable frequency laser rods of 200mm length, fired in wide beam, 100 channels/beam. Automatic debris-pattern lock ensures no fragments of large size of target asteroid impinge on ship space. Can be fitted with a fuel and matter scoop. KEY FUNCTIONS - COMBAT A Fire laser T Target missile M Fire missile U Unarm missile E Operate ECM  Launch energy bomb
 Launch escape capsule
3 Equipment acquisition INTERGALACTIC TRADING 
The Cobra Mk III, designed primarily as a trading ship, combines combat efficiency and manoeuverability with substantial cargo space (20 Tonne Canisters) and with scoop attachments for space debris, jettisoned cargo and space rock. Most space stations have made the process of trading very simple, in order to facilitate a fast turnover in goods and ships. Import and export tariffs - which are high on some worlds - are automatically added or deducted and this is reflected in the prices shown. The auto-trader system, employed by the Cobra, does not allow for more specific trading deals to be performed. A selection of the more valuable alien items that are tradeable is given in this manual, but the trader must deal with them in person. Once docked you are linked directly with the CorCom Trade System. At your request you can obtain a list of basic trade items available for purchase. Slaves are measured by the tonne in galactic trading. This may seem a little strange, but it includes the cryogenic suspension system necessary to keep them alive during space travel. The slave trade, once almost eliminated by the Galactic government is now returning, despite the efforts of the Galactic Police Force to suppress it. AVERAGE ITEM PRICE/CR Food (Simple organic products, see below) 4.4 tonne Textiles (Unprocessed fabrics) 6.4 " Radioactives (Ores and by-products) 21.2 " * Slaves (Usually humanoid) 8.0 " Liquor/Wines (Exotic spirits from unearthy flora) 25.2 " Luxuries (Perfumes, Spices, Coffee) 91.2 " * Narcotics (Tobacco, Arcturan Megaweed) 114.8 " Computers (Intelligent machinery) 84.0 " Machinery (Factory and farm equipment) 56.4 " Alloys (Industrial Metals) 32.8 " * Firearms (Small-scale artillery, sidearms, etc) 70.4 " Furs (Includes leathers, Millennium Wompom Pelts) 56.0 " Minerals (Unrefined rock containing trace elements) 8.0 kg Gold 37.2 kg Platinum 65.2 kg Gem-stones (Includes jewelry) 16.4 g Alien Items (Artifacts, Weapons, etc) 27.0 tonne
DISCO MARKET PRICES quantities of each item available, and the current UNIT OUANTITY market price per unit. Most PRODUCT UNIT PRICE FOR SALE CorCom Trade Systems deal exclusively under Food t 2.8 18t blanket catagories, Textiles t 6.4 18t including FOOD, Radioactives t 21.2 26t MACHINERY, MINERALS, Slaves t 9.6 14t and GEMSTONES. Liquor/Wines t 26.8 39t Luxuries t 98.4 8t Narcotics t 77.2 - Computers t 96.0 - Machinery t 63.6 10t Alloys t 39.2 25t Firearms t 83.2 - Furs t 67.2 - Minerals t 11.2 61t Gold kg 38.8 14kg Platinum kg 69.2 17kg Gem-Stones g 21.2 14g Alien Items t 59.6 -
number equal to the tonnage of food you wish to purchase, and press RETURN. You will then be asked, in turn, how much you want to buy of each item on the list of goods available. Press RETURN when you do not wish to purchase. You can buy only 20 tonnes in total, and no more of a commodity than there is available. Once you have gone through all the irems, the trading computer will bring up your inventory.
possible sale of all cargo including that just bought (Advanced selling systems permit the sale of precise amounts.).
section of the cargo bay of an Anaconda Class Interstellar Freighter. It is the largest known freighter with a 750-tonne capacity cargo bay and is used mainly on the safer trade routes. 
Demand for goods varies widely and prices within planets fluctuate, but galCop regulations prohibit planets from advertising their requirements or announcing their market prices beyond their own System Space. Any trader, therefore, approaches all transactions with a certain financial risk. Trade depends upon demand, and selling prices depend upon the level of demand on the planet, and its available money. None of these factors can be assessed before docking. Agricultural planets invariably have excess produce at reasonable purchase prices, and such food sells well at industrialised, middle-to-high-technology worlds. Raw materials, and ores, will sell well to middle-tech worlds, which are usually able to refine them, and the refined product can fetch excellent prices at worlds of very high tech status. The rules are complex, and anarchy and piracy has its effect on causing the rules to change. In trading with a planet, consider its economic profile: AGRICULTURAL WORLDS need specialist food and raw materials, but mostly basic machinery and spare parts. If they are rich, they need luxuries and high tech industrial machines. They produce food in quantity, raw materials and specialized ‘organic’ items, like some textiles. INDUSTRIAL WORLDS need agricultural produce; raw materials (for refining); resource exploitation machinery; (if rich) high tech goods. They produce basic items of need for civilized worlds: beds, seals and gaskets, power storage units, basic weapons, mass produced fertilizer, mass produced medicines, etc. Think about a planet's needs. Think what might make the society function. Don't trade expensive trivia to a hungry world. If the profit isn't worth it, trade it somewhere else. ALTERNATIVES TO TRADING Since the Cobra craft is equipped as a fighter as well as a trader, with in-built capacity for strengthening its armaments, there are alternative life-styles to trading which may prove profitable, but which are excessively dangerous. BOUNTY HUNTING Galactic banks, which insure the larger trading convoys, will pay a large bounty for each pirate ship destroyed. A ship's computer will transmit photographic evidence of any kill to the GalCop Bank Federation Monitoring Authority. The IR signature of the destroyed ship is then tallied with all known pirate vessels, and the bounty hunter pilot credited accordingly. Bounty hunters commonly have Cobra Class ships in order to masquerade as traders. They simply hyperspace into a system (anarchic and feudal worlds especially) and wait to be attacked, ensuring that they have sufficient hyperspace fuel (Quirium) for a quick escape. PIRACY Piracy is widespread throughout the 8 galaxies, and many pirates are not hardened criminals at all, but failed traders who have turned to this way of life in desperation. To survive as a pirate, looting freighter convoys and small ships, requires a high degree of combat experience, since not just Police Vipers will pursue them, but other pirate ships and Bounty Hunters, too, prey upon them. But the rewards are high. Provided the pirate ship is equipped with a fuel scoop, the jettisoned tonne-cannisters of attacked cargo ships can be scooped up and traded. ASTEROID MINING There is money in rock, but to make the most of it a Cobra ship must be fitted with a fuel scoop and a MinReduc 15 Mining Laser (or some equivalent type). The mining laser will blast very large asteroids into very small fragments and the scoop can rapidly swallow this tradeable ore. 
Asteroids are large chunks of FRONT VIEW rock which are mined (for the valuable trace elements that they contain) with the aid of a mining laser designed to Chromalloy cannisters are used fragment the rock into splinters to store cargo during space small enough to be taken into flights. They are extremely a cargo bay by a fuel scoop. As resilient and may survive the they are a navigational hazard, demise of their holding vessel. a small bounty is paid for Such cannisters can be picked destroying an asteroid, and a up in space with a fuel scoop kill awarded (which will help fitted to the bottom of a ship, improve your rating). but pilots beware picking up contraband by mistake since it may harm status and invite attack.
Democracies Multi-Governments Confederacies Feudal Worlds Communist States Anarchies CORPORATE STATES Like ENGEMA and ZAATXE, these are well-ordered worlds, which have usually developed from settlers who practiced a free trade form of competition. Taxation is high on such worlds, but the living standards are high also. Corporate planets with to protect their trade, so goods are expensive, but luxuries are welcomed. Import licences are often necessary. Engema is an agricultural world, run as a single farming co-operative. Farmers receive a fixed payment for their crops, whether or not the harvest is good, and selling prices do not vary greatly. It is a dependable market, and customer relations are good. Luxuries, machinery and raw materials sell well here. Zaatxe is an example of a rich, industrial state (Tech level 12). It produces luxury goods, elaborate and innovative machine systems, and specializes in Prototype design. Prices fluctuate depending upon the level of inter-state competition, but it is always a safe bet to buy recently-developed machine items which have not yet spread very far across the galaxy. DICTATORSHIPS Dictatorships such as the worlds LAVE and ENZAER, are only moderately safe to trade with, but are well worth the risk (provided the trader is well defended and combat trained). Very often pirate attack will not occur because of an agreement between pirate fleets and the world itself. A proportion of all incoming trade is ‘allowed’ to be stolen by pirates, who will then leave the world alone, and protect its shops from aliens or rogue traders. It is an uneasy liaison, which often breaks down. Lave is an agricultural world, and Enzaer an industrial planet, but a similar principle operates on both surfaces. There are two trading standards, that of the People and that of the Aristocracy. Standards of living are artificially generated, a veneer of progress, and luxury goods, machinery and textiles sell well - usually. The great demand, however, is for basic commodities, especially foodstuffs, clothing and raw materials. These will sell well when the voice of the People has been raised in protest. ANARCHY PLANETS A trader can make his biggest profits here and reach his grave the quickest. Worlds like Onisou and Xeesenri have vast wreck-yards in far orbit, the dead places of ships that came to trade honestly, and fell prey to trickery. 
DATA ON MAESIN 
Distance : 57.2 Light Years Economy : Poor Agricultural Government : Anarchy Tech. Level : 1 Population : 0.8 Billion (Small Harmless Furry Rodents) Gross Productivity : 768 M CR Agerage Radius : 5784 km These are lawless places, and have usually become so because the original settlers completed too hard when there was too little resource material. Those worlds which survived holocaust did so because of uneasy and bloody alliances between clan families. Pirates and mercenaries were hired for protection and assassination purposes. Anarchic worlds will trade readily in narcotics, slaves, firearms and exotica, and the price will be good... if you get a price at all. These worlds are almost always supplying invisible Masters, usually elite trader/combateers who have turned to crime as the most profitable way of life. Such form loose federations, and trade on the black market extensively throughout the galaxies. These worlds pay highly for goods they cannot produce themselves, because they know that traders avoid them. Their own products need specialized, illegal outlets: weaponry, narcotics, eavesdropping devices... if it's covert, then anarchic worlds are producing it. Trade in these items and you will get rich quick, or dead quick, or at least become a ‘Fugitive’. ALIEN RACES Of the 2040 officially registered planets in the GalCop, all but 45 support human colonies only, that is to say, human presence elsewhere is restricted to settlements in under-populated parts of the land surface. Trading at such worlds depends, for its success, very much upon the extant state of co-operation between human and alien. Human control the Coriolis stations in orbit, but the availability of items for trade, and their relative expense, can be affected by the controlling life forms. Most alien life forms are either too primitive, or too glad of off-World trade, to interfere. Some, such as the Reptiloid life form of Esanbe or the Amphibioids of Anbeen, can make a trader's life very difficult, by haggling at the point of a laser. The available planetary information on all worlds will indicate the nature of the inhabiting life form. BIRD-FORMS. Dealing in alien artifacts on such worlds often involves forming a close liaison with Flight Elders, or Nest Elders, and this is very much a job for the specialist. Bird-forms are, on the whole, a delight to trade with, and the highest form of honor (fairly universally) that an off-worlder can receive is an (invitation to ‘keep the eggs warm for a moment’. AMPHIBIOIDS are usually a lot sharper than their wet, sluggish appearance would suggest. They are usually keen to trade in narcotics, or exotic foodstuffs. Skin creams are always well received. Technologically they tend to be backward, but will pay high prices for such middle-range items as automated ponds, croak metres, spawn freezers and swamp purifiers. FELINES are dangerous in the extreme. No matter what sort of political structures the world may have, feline aliens are pack orientated, and feudal, and very unpredictable. All traders are advised to wear body suits, to prevent secretions of sweat from triggering a feeding response among these hostile and enigmatic life forms. To win the confidence of a feline alien is almost invariably to be invited to mate, so a certain aloofness is recommended. INSECTOIDS. The most dangerous insectoidal life form is the Thargoid, which is mentioned in the Combat section. Insectoidals are usually highly intelligent, often existing as a group mind. There is rarely any individuality among insectoids, and the trader must beware making deals in such a way. One life form builds earth cities up to four miles high, and over four million drones live in the middle levels. According to legend, any trader who voluntarily ascends the earth passageway from ground to upper surface of these immense mounds is honored with the rare title Ascender of the Scent City. And then consumed alive. But trading with insectoids can be immensely profitable, as there are so many of them (to trade in wrist watches, for example, means two to four watches per individual in a clone-group of perhaps ten thousand). In dealing with any alien life-form, for the purposes of trade, there are three cardinal rules: Learn the body language of the alien race. Cover up your body scent. Beware of Carapace concealed weapons. OBSERVER’S GUIDE TO SHIPS IN SERVICE
In most trading and combat operations, certain ships are repeatedly encountered. All ships, whether unarmed cargo shuttles or Navy transporters, are potentially dangerous as pirate and bounty hunting activity spreads. Some ships are potentially more dangerous than others. The brief guide given here is just an indication of the range of ship-types plying the trade and space lanes. The illustrations show top, side and front views of each craft. Dimension data provide the scale. For a fuller account see Jane's Galactic Ships and Remote Colonial Construction, 5th Edition, 3205 pub. Trantor House. ADDER Manufactured by Outworld Workshops, a rogue breakaway company from Spalder and Prime Inc. which operates without license from an unknown location, the Adder-class craft has dual atmospheric-spatial capability and is often used by smugglers. Pregg's ‘wingfolding’ system permits landing on planetary surfaces. Carries one missile. Dimensions 45/8/30 ft Cargo Capacity 2 TC (Tonne Canisters) Armaments Ingram 1928 AZ Beam laser
Maximum Velocity 0.24 LM (Light Mach) Inservice Date 2914 AD (Outworld Workshop) Manoeuverability CF4 (Curve Factor) Crew Number 2 Drive Motors AM 18 bi Thrust Hull Stress Factor T Ko 28 Hyperspace Capability Yes  
ANACONDA The largest known freighter with a cargo bay designed by Beerbaum and ThruSpace Inc., the Anaconda is the only freighter fitted with Dizaner SpaceWares swing-float platforms. These load-balance metering devices enable the loadmaster to rearrange the cargo within seconds to increase maneuverability of the great ship. Equipped only with laser weaponry (the 500 Gigazap front-firing pulse), and sometimes with missiles, the Anaconda range of craft usually have fighter escorts. In trader parlance, the Anaconda is built as strong as a rogue asteroid, and steers like one. Dimensions 170/60/75 ft Cargo Capacity 750 TC Armaments Front-fire Hassoni HiRad Pulse laser
Missiles (Geret Starseekers) Maximum Velocity 0.14 LM Inservice Date 2856 AD (RimLiner Galactic) Manoeuverability CF3 (Curve Factor) Crew Number 40-72 Drive Motors V&K 32.24 Ergmasters, with under-and-over firing tubes Hull Stress Factor T(ensmann) Ji57 C-Holding Z 22-28 Hyperspace Capability Yes  
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Shown on this list are the
Geret Starseeker missile
ColtMaster Starlasers