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Droid Washing Guide

"Droid washing", or more generally "washing", is a method to gain Advanced Trade Points (ATPs) quickly for a high cost. It involves artificially trading large quantities of credits with planets and neutral starbases by repeatedly buying and selling the same items. The term "droid washing" comes from the fact that droids are one of the most common items used to wash, due to their high planet trade price making them very AP-efficient.

Droid washing method

To quickly start droid washing:

  1. Identify a planet or non-player-owned starbase with a population of 4,999 or less.
  2. Obtain 20t of multiple items (suggested: droids, battleweapons, handweapons, all varieties of stim chips, and robots).
  3. On the planet or non-player-owned starbase, sell an initial 1t of each item so that there is 1t of it on the planet/starbase.
  4. Once there is 1t of each item on the planet-side of the trade window, enter '19' into both the sell box and the buy box of each item and trade. This should sell 19t of each item to the planet/starbase, and then immediately buy 19t back.
  5. Repeat step 4. until enough ATPs have been earned.

Cost to droid wash

Players gain 1 ATP per 4 million credits earned through trades at planets, non-player-owned starbases, black markets, Gem Merchants, and Faction Smelting Facilities. The price to buy an item from a planet or starbase is 1.25 the cost to sell the item, regardless of what the item is or what its initial selling cost is, and the selling cost is determined by the maximum quantity the planet or starbase is able to buy. Therefore, how many credits you will lose to gain 1 ATP is only dependent only on the maximum quantity of the item you can sell to the planet or non-player-owned starbase. The lower the maximum quantity of the item you can sell to the planet or non-player-owned starbase, the lower the cost per ATP. The formula is given below:

$CostPerATP(item_{max}) = 40000004,000,000 * ((10^{-\frac{1}{item_{max}}} * 1.25) - 1)$

The maximum quantity of an item the planet or non-player-owned starbase is willing to buy is dependent on its population. For a population less than 5,000, most items will have a maximum quantity of 20, achieving the lowest cost per ATP. With no diversity bonuses, this will result in a cost per ATP of 456,255credits_16x16.png. With a neutral trade uplink bonus and diversity 6, it will result in a cost per ATP of 308,280credits_16x16.png. A planet or non-player-owned starbase with a population between 5,000 and 14,999 will have a maximum quantity of 40 for most items, which will result in a cost per ATP of 720,304credits_16x16.png (486,692credits_16x16.png with maximum diversity bonus).

Items to droid wash

As the cost of droid washing is only dependent on the maximum quantity of items the planet (or starbase) is willing to buy, and the maximum quantity of items the planet is willing to buy is dependent on the planet's population, most items will earn an equal number of ATPs for the same cost. However, items with a higher initial selling cost will earn more ATPs per trade, making them more AP-efficient to wash compared to cheaper items. See the table below for a list of recommended items to wash, ordered by initial selling cost.

Item Image Initial selling cost
Droids droid_modules.png 12,000credits_16x16.png
Handweapons hand-weapons.png 4,800credits_16x16.png
Battleweapons battleweapon_parts.png 3,530credits_16x16.png
Capri Stim stim_chip_fed.png 3,360credits_16x16.png
Crimson Stim stim_chip_emp.png 3,360credits_16x16.png
Amber Stim stim_chip_uni.png 3,360credits_16x16.png
Robots robots.png 3,200credits_16x16.png
Stim Chip stim_chip.png 2,400credits_16x16.png
Electronics electronics.png 1,000credits_16x16.png

Ship setup for droid washing

Whilst you can droid wash using any ship, it is generally advisable to use a ship with a large cargo capacity so you can trade more items at once. A ship with 200t of free cargo capacity can wash 20t of 10 different items at once, gaining a larger number of ATPs for the same number of trades and APs as a ship with a less free cargo capacity. It is recommended to install a Class I Teleporter (or Class II Teleporter) to reduce the AP cost of trading from 10aps down to 5aps. Additionally, it is recommended to consume 1t of capri stims (stim_chip_fed.png) prior to washing to further reduce the AP cost of trading from 5aps down to 2aps.

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