Trade

Trade involves the transfer of the ownership of goods or services from one person or entity to another in exchange for other goods or services or for money. Possible synonyms of "trade" include "commerce" and "financial transaction". A network that allows trade is called a market.

The original form of trade, barter, saw the direct exchange of goods and services for other goods and services. Barter is trading things without the use of money. Later one side of the barter started to involve precious metals, which gained symbolic as well as practical importance. Modern traders generally negotiate through a medium of exchange, such as money. As a result, buying can be separated from selling, or earning. The invention of money (and later credit, paper money and non-physical money) greatly simplified and promoted trade. Trade between two traders is called bilateral trade, while trade between more than two traders is called multilateral trade.

Trade exists due to the specialization and division of labor, in which most people concentrate on a small aspect of production, trading for other products. Trade exists between regions because different regions may have a comparative advantage (perceived or real) in the production of some trade-able commodity, or because different regions' size may encourage mass production. As such, trade at market prices between locations can benefit both locations.

Ship

A ship is a large buoyant watercraft. Ships are generally distinguished from boats based on size, shape and cargo or passenger capacity. Ships are used on lakes, seas,rivers,and oceans for a variety of activities, such as the transport of people or goods, fishing, entertainment, public safety, and warfare. Historically, a "ship" was a sailing vessel with at least three square-rigged masts and a full bowsprit.

In armed conflict and in daily life, ships have become an integral part of modern commercial and military systems. Fishing boats are used by millions of fishermen throughout the world. Military forces operate vessels for naval warfare and to transport and support forces ashore. Commercial vessels, nearly 35,000 in number, carried 7.4 billion tons of cargo in 2007. As of 2011, there are about 104,304 ships with IMO numbers in the world.

Ships were always a key in history's great explorations and scientific and technological development. Navigators such as Zheng He spread such inventions as the compass and gunpowder. Ships have been used for such purposes as colonization and the slave trade, and have served scientific, cultural, and humanitarian needs. After the 16th century, new crops that had come from and to the Americas via the European seafarers significantly contributed to the world population growth.Ship transport has shaped the world's economy into today's energy-intensive pattern.

Elite: Dangerous

Elite: Dangerous is a space adventure, trading, and combat simulator that is the fourth release in the Elite video game series. Piloting a spaceship, the player explores a realistic 1:1 scale open world galaxy based on the real Milky Way, with the gameplay being open-ended. The game is the first in the series to attempt to feature massively multiplayer gameplay, with players' actions affecting the narrative story of the game's persistent universe, while also retaining single player options. It is the sequel to Frontier: First Encounters, the third game in the Elite series, released in 1995.

Having been unable to agree to a funding deal with a publisher for many years, the developer began its Kickstarter campaign in November 2012. Pre-release test versions of the game had been available to backers since December 2013, and the final game was released for Windows on 16 December 2014, with the OS X version later released on 12 May 2015. A "preview" version of the game for Xbox One was later released via the Xbox Game Preview Program on 15 June 2015 during Microsoft's briefing at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2015, and was fully released on 6 October 2015, with a PlayStation 4 version potentially coming later after the timed exclusivity deal for Xbox One expires. Elite: Dangerous supports virtual reality devices such as the Oculus Rift. By the end of April 2015, Elite: Dangerous had sold over 500,000 copies, with Frontier Developments expected to generate £22 million from sales.

X Rebirth

X Rebirth is a single-player space trading and combat game developed by Egosoft, published by Deep Silver (Europe) and Tri Synergy (America). It is the sixth installment in the X universe adventure video game series, following X3: Albion Prelude (2012), as the new sequel to the last game title. The game runs on Microsoft Windows and Linux. Egosoft Director Bernd Lehahn has stated that X Rebirth will not be available on consoles.

Gameplay

X Rebirth incorporates open-ended (or "sandbox") gameplay. As with previous installments in the series the game will take place in a universe that is active even when the player is not present, involving simulated trade, combat, piracy, and other features. The player as an individual may take part in these or other actions to gain notoriety or wealth, going so far as to be able to construct their own space installations and command fleets of starships, establishing what amounts to their own personal empire and dynamically and drastically altering the game world in the process.

Trading card

A trading card (or collectible card) is a small card, usually made out of paperboard or thick paper, which usually contains an image of a certain person, place or thing (fictional or real) and a short description of the picture, along with other text (attacks, statistics, or trivia). There is a wide variation of different types of cards. Modern cards even go as far as to include swatches of game worn memorabilia, autographs, and even DNA hair samples of their subjects.

Trading cards are traditionally associated with sports; baseball cards are especially well-known. Cards dealing with other subjects like Pokémon are often considered a separate category from sports cards, known as non-sports trading cards. These often feature cartoons, comic book characters, television series and film stills. In the 1990s, cards designed specifically for playing games became popular enough to develop into a distinct category, collectible card games. These tend to use either fantasy subjects or sports as the basis for game play.