Outposts and Trader Level

Trader level refers to your ability to make cash/supplies from outposts.
The higher your Trader level, the more outposts you can have. You can
have up to 3x your trader level in outpost, although going beyond 1x
will incur a penalty that increases with each outpost over your level
that you have. If you have 2x your level in outposts, the penalty is
25%; with 3x your level the penalty is 50%. The over limit penalty is in
addition to any distance penalties you may have. Since you get
penalized, you may wonder why you would want to go over your limit? The
answer is simple, the more outposts you have, the more times you collect
and the faster you raise your trader skill level. Each time you
collect an outpost it gives you 1 trader xp, no matter the size of the
outpost or if you are over your limit, so the more you have the faster
you level. At early stages you won't really make anything from your
outposts so it is advisable to purchase only the 3hr ones until you
reach trader level 10, so you'll have 30 3hr outposts, this will ensure
that you continue to level trader quickly. At this point start
purchasing the 24hr outposts which will actually allow you to make a
profit. continue in this fashion until your trader level is equal to
your overall level and then start phasing out the 3hr outposts,
replacing them with 24 and 48hr ones. Another thing to keep in mind is,
try to get groupings of your outposts to collect at the same time, you
want enough to purchase a bar after you collect so 5000, that way you
can protect your earnings.

(Current Trader Level - 8 ) x Current Trader Level = Number of collections needed to level

Ex. Trader level 27:

27 - 8 = 19 x 27 = 513 collections to the level reach level 28

This formula is based on info provided by Angelshark.
She wrote down the number of collections to reach 28 and 30. I just did the math.



Hint, if you want to maximize returns AND trader level, here's a little tip Andr0 got from Nopenada:
Keep your trader level amount of 48 hour outposts. Build 3 hour outposts up to 3x your max. Delete your 3 hours posts before collecting your 48 hour posts. Then rebuild the 3 hour outposts until you have 3 times your trader level in outposts.

Example: Trader level 26. Ideally, I would have 26x48hrs outposts and 52x3hrs outposts. I would sell the 3hrs prior to collecting the 48hrs and pay 0% penalty.

I currently have 38 outposts (I was running with 2.5x with a mix of 3 hr and 24 hrs. I changed quite a few of the 24 hours over to 48 hours). I sold all my 3 hour posts prior to collecting from the 38 posts (these were all 24 hour outposts). I paid a 9% penalty, but that's better than the 35% penalty I was paying!


Now I get to build up to 26x3 outposts, so I can build 40 3-hour outposts to help increase my level. I won't pay a huge penalty since I'll be deleting them prior to collecting the bigger outposts. I can see how this is more time efficient to only have 48 hour outposts so you only have to delete/rebuild every two days. If you're just starting out, you can do this with the 12 hours, then the 24hrs, etc.

Build 24/48 hrs. Build 3 hrs. Collect 3 hrs often. Delete 3 hrs. Collect from 24/48 hrs. Repeat.