Trading

How you spend Rare Metals on trade partners instead of selling them to your own sponsor. There are no rival colonies: each trade partner appears on the Planetary View as a trade project wearing that partner's flag. Each offers one Trade Good in return, priced in Rare Metals and sorted into a theme Group.

Trade Good by sponsor

Sponsor	Trade Good		Group	Required DLC
International Mars Mission	250 Sponsor Research	30	Research
USA	3 random Tech reveals (different fields where possible), each −10% research cost	30	Research
Europe	5,000 Research	30	Research
India	12 young Martian-born Colonists (no specialization; only Nerd and Enthusiast)	30	Colonist
China	6 adult Engineers, random traits	30	Colonist
Church of the New Ark	3 middle-aged Gurus (only Workaholic and Religious)	30	Colonist
Blue Sun Corporation	10 each , ,	30	Economy
Brazil	120	30	Economy	Space Race
Japan	120	30	Economy	Space Race
SpaceY	1 Rocket	60	Other
Terraforming Initiative	+3% each terraforming parameter	30	Other	Green Planet
Paradox Interactive	1 Breakthrough reveal	30	Other

Required DLC is the add-on you must own for that partner to exist. An empty cell means the base game - no DLC needed. Brazil and Japan come with Space Race and Terraforming Initiative with Green Planet; without that DLC the partner (and its trade) drops from the pool and the other partners still trade.

No Colonist you get from any trade is ever a tourist - every one is a permanent settler, whatever the sponsor.

A Colonist arrives at the youngest age of its stated band - a "young" Colonist at the start of Youth, an "adult" at the start of Adult, a "middle-aged" Guru at the start of Middle-Aged, never partway into the band. This maximizes the years they serve.

How a trade works

1. Trade partners at game start. You choose which partners are possible on the Mission Setup screen (the Possible Trade Partners row, a checklist like Possible Sponsors). The run is then seeded with one partner from each Group (Research, Colonist, Economy, Other), drawn at random from the partners you leave checked, and never your own sponsor. That is up to four partners, one per group; a Group with no checked partner left is simply absent (never doubled up).
2. Each partner is a trade project on the map. There is no rival colony - the partner appears directly as a Special Project on the Planetary View, like Launch SETI Satellite or the Comm Satellite (see Special Projects), one project per partner. It takes a fixed colony-style spot on the surface (a valid landing location it keeps for the rest of the game) and its marker wears that partner's flag as its icon. Its title reads "Trade with <partner>". It is available from the start (no Founder-Stage lock), and unlike other Special Projects it raises no "New Special Project" notification - it is a standing offer, not a one-off event. Clicking it opens the trade panel: the flavour line, then the rows Additional Inventory (the Rare Metals cost), Outcome (the reward), Expedition time, and Repeatable (every 10 Sols, with the cost rising each time).
3. You send your own rocket. Launch one of your own rockets on that Special Project, loaded with the partner's required Rare Metals (30, or 60 for SpaceY). It is your rocket - no partner rocket is involved. A trade pays the rocket's regular launch fuel to fly there, the same as every special project (70 Fuel for a standard Rocket, 50 with Advanced Martian Engines); there is no Fuel in the trade payload. The loaded rocket shows its Rare Metals payload in its own info panel (the game carries trade Rare Metals as an export, which the standard cargo list would not otherwise show).
4. You get the good. The round trip takes 1 Sol. When the project completes your rocket flies straight back carrying the good: Metals, advanced resources and any Colonists ride home in the returning rocket itself. Goods with no cargo (Sponsor Research, Tech or Breakthrough reveals, terraforming) apply directly on completion. SpaceY's good is a Rocket: your rocket returns and a second Rocket arrives in orbit for you to land.
5. Reappears, and rises. After you complete a partner's project it comes back 10 Sols later at the same spot, but each run costs 20% more Rare Metals than the one before. The prices in the table above are the first (base) cost.

Equal chance per partner

The selection is built toward one goal: over many random runs, every partner is equally likely to appear. Because the game takes exactly one partner per group and picks it uniformly inside that group, equal group sizes make every partner equally likely. With all DLC each of the four groups holds three sponsors, so each of the twelve partners shows up in roughly one run in three. Play 10,000 random games and every partner turns up about as often as every other.

Missing DLC skews this, and the mod softens the worst case. When a DLC is absent its partners drop out and their group shrinks, so the sponsors left in that group appear more often. The extreme is a group left with a single member: it is then picked in every run. Without Space Race, Economy would be Blue Sun alone (Brazil and Japan are gone), so Blue Sun would appear in every game. To avoid that, when Space Race is not installed the mod moves Blue Sun into the Other group: Other then holds four sponsors (SpaceY, Paradox, Terraforming Initiative, Blue Sun) at one in four each, and Economy is simply absent. This does not restore a perfectly even split (one in four against the base-game groups' one in three) and the run then has three partners instead of four, but it removes the guaranteed pick and keeps the spread tight. The mirror case is left as it is: without Green Planet, Terraforming Initiative drops and the Other group holds two sponsors (SpaceY, Paradox) at one in two each.

Trade flavour text

The flavour below is the trade panel's description line: it sets the partner's character and says, in words, what the trade gives. The exact reward is the panel's Outcome row and the cadence is the Repeatable row, so the flavour itself carries no numbers. There are no rival colonies, so none of the old rival interaction exists - no Contact, Distress Call, trade routes or Covert Ops.

The vanilla Space Race Trade Pad is deleted as well: it is removed from the build menu, and a regular Landing Pad can no longer be converted into one (the "Convert to Trade Pad" button is gone). This closes the vanilla rival-trade path - the unsolicited "New Trade Offer" (Accept / Reject) popup and the autonomous "New Trade Route" / "Closed Trade Route" notifications are all silenced, so the Special-Project trade above is the sole way to trade.

Sources

Part of the Survive the Storm mod. The Trade Good per sponsor is also listed on the Sponsors page.