This aspect of the game is crucial. You cannot play core-exiles without using the CS and the CSTS. The commercial storage is where you store resources and commodities, essentially anything you can put in your ship's cargo hold. The commercial store transport is how you transfer large amounts of items stored in your commercial storage between different planets or settlements. Because these are a core aspect to the game, it is important to fully understand how they work. This guide will go over the two different Commercial storage pages, and will cover the layout of the CSTS and how to transfer items between different commercial storages.
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Entering Into The Commercial Storage
You will find a Commercial Storage on every planet and settlement in the game. This is one of the default stores which is everywhere, and cannot be removed from a player settlement. When you click on the view option for the Commercial Storage on a promenade you will be brought to a page that contains some text about the CS. On this page you will also have two buttons, one to "View All Store Contents", and another to "Enter Commercial Storage". I'll cover the view all option first.
The View All Store Contents Button
Clicking on this button will bring you to a page which simply contains a table. This table could be small, or have 700 rows in it, this depends on how many different items you have stored in the commercial storage. To get to the table just hit control home then T to jump to the first and only table on the page which is the one you need. When you enter into the table it will say the table stats followed by " Contents of your Commercial Stores Galaxy Wide". This is exactly what it is, it is showing you all of your items stored in every CS through the entire game.
If you have 10 construction components at starbase-51, 25 construction components at Messer in Descarte, and 100 construction components at Cinque Port in Kelsey, these will all show up in their own table rows as separate resources. You can not do anything with these resources, the only reason this is in the game is so you can view what you have stored and where. This is the same list you will see if you were to go into your assets tab and click on view commercial stores.
This table only has a few columns, Item Name, Qty in Player Store, Qty in Transit, Location. These are very self explanatory, the only one that may be confusing is the in transit column. This is in case you are currently moving a stack of resources via the CSTS, this will tell you how long it will take them to get to their new location.
The Enter Commercial Storage Button
This page is a little bit more confusing, and will actually show you nothing when you enter it. You need to first choose what you want to see. It is also location specific, meaning it will only show you resources you have stored at your current location.
At the top of the body, meaning the text directly under the assets tab you will find options to transfer the contents of your ship's cargo hold into the commercial storage. This is useful if you are in the middle of combat or mining and need a place to dump loot to continue gathering. If your cargo is empty this will just be text with a button that also reads "Move Everything from Cargo to CS". If you have cargo there will be a table as well with the contents of your ship's cargo hold listed in it, so you can choose to move all with the above button or transfer items individually. Under this first part there is a link to exit the CS. However if you need to view resources or collect something the rest of the page is what you need.
Under the first exit link you will see a bunch of links which are formatted to look like tabs. These are how you choose what type of resources you wish to view. Remember this is only for stuff you have stored at your current location. The different tabs/categories are.
View All Items.
Alien.
Commodity.
Expanse.
Nebula.
Resources.
Settlement.
Special Resource.
Clicking on one of these categories will load all the items for that category. Choosing to view all will clearly show you all of the resources in every category.
If you aren't sure, or only need to grab one resources, your best option might be to perform a search. Under the tab listing there is an edit box which you can use to search for a specific resource. If you don't know how to spell what you want, you will want to copy it or just choose to view all. You only need to know the first couple letters however. For example if I needed to collect some Dyzalithiaum Fuel, I could just type "dyz" into the edit box. After doing that it will give me a list of items under the edit box, I could just then simply click on the link for Dyzalithiaum Fuel, and have it auto filled into the edit box. After that just hit the button to search and it brings up a table to collect the resource.
The collection table for one resource, or in a resource listing is very simple and easy to understand. There is a trade button first which brings you to a page to trade a specific amount of a resource to whoever you wish. The normal trading format holds, you enter the name, the amount, and the price. If you don't wish to trade but to transfer to your ship's cargo hold there are buttons to move specific amounts, or a more generalized move button which brings you to a page where you can choose how much you want to transfer to your ship.
After collecting a resource you get a conformation page, and you can choose to return to the commercial storage or return to the promenade.
The Commercial Store Transport Service
The commercial store transport service or CSTS is very similar to the Commercial storage, and both are linked to one another. This being said not all planets have a CSTS so be aware of this when sending resources to a CS.
You can access the CSTS from any promenade and after choosing to enter the store you will be presented with a page that is dominated by a large table. Depending on how big your commercial storage is at your location it make take a few seconds to load.
Starting right under the assets tab the first thing you will see is a list of categories you can sort your CSTS by. These are: All Items, Alien, Commodity, Expanse, Nebula, Resource, Settlement, Special Resource. Clicking on one of these categories will show only that type in the tabel right below the list.
The table is very straight forward and very simple to understand. The table headers are: Item Name, Qty in Commercial Store, Transport, Guild Store. The items in the item name colum will be just, the name of the item. The numbers in the Qty in Commercial Store will be how many you have stored in the commercial store at your specific location. In the transport colum you will have a button to transport that item shown to the left. Finally the deposit button is if you want to deposit some of it into your guild's stores. If you are not in a guild you won't have the last colum.
If you choose to transport an item you will be brought to a page where you type in the amount and then choose the new location via a combo/list box. After doing that you hit the button to transport the items and you are all set. It will cost 1 credit per 1 resource and it will take time to arive depending on how far it is going and the amount.