Both of the original games in one form or another revolved around the concept of the player making a profit via trading, the ultimate goal of which was to improve their starship as much as possible. The usefulness of trading is most obvious in SF2, where the player was expected to go to various trade centers around the sector and make money of off several different types of goods. Trading is more subtle in SF1, but nonetheless still present; mining, the primary reliable mode of making money in SF1, involved collecting minerals and then going back to Starport
to sell them at the Trade Depot. "Trading" as used in SFRPG encompasses all business transactions in the Starflight Universe. This includes not only purchases of trade goods, minerals, and lifeforms, but can also include personal equipment, starship and vehicle parts, small craft, and the like. In any campaign, trading is going to be vitally important no matter which model (SF1s, SF2s, or something else) the GM uses.
Trading using Starflight II's model has some complex mechanics to it and is probably the most math-intensive portion of SFRPG, and bears further discussion. The following two sub-chapters deal with the trading process using the SF2 trading model. The first deals with the creation lists used to determine what goods a trader is willing to buy from and sell to the PCs. The second deals with the specifics of the trading process itself, including what die rolls need to be made and what can happen when the players try to deal.
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