Free Trade acts as the dominant controlling body of trade throughout all the interactions on the planet. While not considerable as a "real" faction, they hold substantial, almost unrivaled control of crafts and tools, as well as providing a series of basic products, making them a faction in their own right. This guide will describe their products and uses.

To navigate quickly, use the Guide Index on the right sidebar to access sections quickly. Sections are organized by purchasing category.

TradeStar Midas, with the exception of the Dummy Facton and community mods, are the sole distributors of crafts as of Build 30. As such, this section in particular is applicable to every faction more than anything else - players with vanilla copies of Cortex Command will, for the most part, be shuffling all their troops into these rockets.

Drop Crate
An inexpensive way to send down your purchases - weapons, supplies, even troops.
Its primary benefits are its speed in delivery and its overall protection it supplies to its contents. Especially useful when you can't afford one of the rockets, as its prices is a pittance in comparison. Additionally, it's untargetable by anti-air drones, making it an effective craft to get bodies behind enemy lines.
It lacks in efficiency, however. Using drop crates lops a 20oz fine on top of your delivery you don't make back - the rockets and dropship crafts deliver and proceed to return back to TradeStar, retaining your gold count. The drops are also relatively inaccurate - Any units standing near the designated drop zone are fair game to be crushed.

Rocket MK1
A standard rocket-type craft used to drop troops on either side of where it lands. As far as returning crafts go, the Rocket MK1 stands to be the cheapest risk when dropping in a contested area, considering it's relative price. However, it suffers from its tall stature and need to land - poor terrain or sustained enemy fire could easily turn it to crush the very troops it delivered. It also controls poorly In the case that you wanted to land it somewhere else.
It can also be used as an effective, albeit expensive suicide craft/missle In dire situations/for comedic effect.

Rocket MK2
Very similar to its sister rocket, the MK2 lops an extra 60oz on its delivery in exchange for stronger thrusters, better armor, and cooler design - ensuring you can safely deliver heavier cargo, improve the chances of getting your refund back, and become the coolest brain-child on the block. Experience, however, concludes similar problems of tipping over and overall flying control like the MK1 - and its upgrades do little to prevent that.

Dropship MK1
The Dropship MK1 is the only craft of its kind provided by TradeStar - and remains as my personal favourite out of all the other options. At a whopping 300oz, its dual thruster design can drop many units - even on poor terrain - and has greatly improved control when changing landing zones. With its downward facing doors, It is also an effective bomber - queueing the buy menu with a handful of bombs allows the dropship to perform strafing runs. On top of all this, the Dropship is best suited to reopening their doors and picking things up from the battlefield - items and bodies alike, even enemies - to redeploy them at will or better yet, launch back into space to sell.
For all these benefits, the Dropship suffers from its large size, relatively slow craft speed, and hefty price. It is incredibly vulnerable to anti-air drones and anticraft weapons, as well as sustained fire. Its thrusters on either side are particularly vulnerable - destroying one absolutely ensures its demise to balance, totaling its cost to 300oz, its contents, a lot of property damage, and whatever its randomly-flying doors hit. Usually your pride.

Tactics
If ordering troops with jetpacks into a hot, dangerous, or contested landing zone, you can immediately select the dropship as it enters the scene and click "Fire" to open its doors prematurely. The units will then be deployed midair and this mitigates the chances of the dropship being destroyed, at the cost of possible unit fall damage.

Perhaps TradeStar's weakest addition are its units. Consisting of fleshy, delicate zombies and skeletons, its shining glory lies in the utility its drones provide - and the crabs.

Skeleton
The skeletons are one of the cheapest actors purchasable - and it shows. More fragile than a rocket filled with 200 crabs (we'll get to that soon) and it's grounded, with no ability to jump or fly. Pretty effective en masse as cannon fodder, in mining roles, or as a basic scout/troop presence in low-priority areas where moving isn't crucial. Their biggest benefit? They can shoot stuff. If they live that long to pull the trigger.

Culled Clones (Thin, Normal, Fat)
Costing a meager 25oz, culled clones rival skeletons in terms of cheapness. They have a slight advantage over skeletons in durablity as well as the ability of a small hop, enabling a sembalance of mobility in unfavorable terrain. There are small differences as a result of their body - thin clones are slightly faster, fat ones can take more hits, and the normal ones are a happy compromise between the two.
With these differences, thin clones could make good miners, where their durability matters less. Fat clones are more suited for defense, where speed plays a minimal role. Finally, normal clones can likely fill the roles similar to skeletons, as bulk infantry.
Unfortunately, they have absolutely no fall resistance - scaling difficult terrain is impossible. Light diggers may be necessary equipment for any troop movement.

Crab
Free. Fragile. (In)Famous. No arms. Crabby mobility. No health.
There are effectively two practical uses for the crab - one is as a completely free scouting unit in scenarios with Fog of War active, able to uncover positions and draw enemy fire from other units.
The second... is a Crab Bomb. Essentially a rocket filled with any number of crabs, brought down, and if not outrageously heavy flown into a place with enemy presence. Depending on the crab payload, this varies from crab gibs acting as shrapnel supplementing the rocket explosion, or overloading the Movable Object limit (MOID), killing everything on the scene.

Anti-Air Drone
A drone with excellent utility as far as a crab unit goes. Outfitted with a decent plating of armor and weak machine gun, these are sent with every brain robot in the campaign as basic escort and protection. Its greatest asset, however, is its auto-tracking missles which fire and track automatically to craft within range. Not only does this deny early-game drops onto your unprotected brain - as the game progresses, more can be bought to solidify and deny area control. 225oz isn't cheap, however - and Anti-Air Drones are poor fighters against conventional troops.

Medic Drone
As another drone, the Medic Drone is the supportive counterpart to the Anti-Air drone. With basic armor and no weapons, it's best behind the front lines indefinately healing injured units and is the sole source of any healing in the vanilla game. It only heals one unit at a time in its effective range, but because of that, makes an excellent companion to a hero- or heavy-type actor as well as squads of lighter units.

Tactics
Crab. Bomb.

Clones and Skeletons have limited mobility, so a Grapple Gun can go far with getting them around where a jetpack can. However, they are so fragile that a Grapple Gun may not even be worth the investment.

Perhaps the greatest contribution Free Trade offers sans their delivery craft is their tools. Many of the other factions can be considered underdeveloped in their tool selection. TradeStar's standard inventory of tools covers every situation you may need them in, and are debatably more effective than faction-specific options at their disposal.

Diggers (Light, Medium, Heavy)
Diggers are arguably the most important component in Cortex Command - They enable the digging of more gold, construction of tunnels to hide the brain, and double as a powerful last-ditch close-combat weapon.
Light and Medium variants have an capacity of 3000 uses before reloading, and both sift through dirt very well. Medium Diggers have the ability to cut through rock and concrete as well, but are ultimately stopped by metal. In contrast, Heavy Diggers have a pitiful 180 uses per clip, and work identically to the Medium, but has a small chance to slowly degrade metal materials. Ultimately, the Heavy Digger isn't too useful for mining - it's better used for breaching a bunker wall and precision destruction.

Scanners (Light, Medium, Heavy)
Scanners are only useful for scenarios with Fog of War, and bunker/underground assualts especially, where normal unit view cannot penetrate. On use, they reveal undiscovered spaces permenantly. Effectiveness varies by type. Although limited in their use, one is helpful for revealing the excessive defenses that can be circumvented or countered.

Detonator
Necessary only with Remote Explosives, the Detonator... detonates them. All of them placed by your team, that is. There's a half-second hold required to detonate, for safety. Or something.

Disarmer
Often overlooked, the Disarmer presents the only reliable way to disable remote explosives and mines safely, allowing them to be picked up and used again. Can be used on your own explosives in case of misplacement. Does not work on normal grenades or the Coalition Timed Explosive.

Concrete Sprayer
The Concrete Sprayer provides ample defense making against bullets and some explosives, but pales in the face of most diggers. Other uses include covering up an escape tunnel, repairing base elements, or flattening the ground for rocket craft to deploy.

Repeller Gun
This is a niche tool described as being able to push grenades or actors. The first option is certainly possible, but requires having the tool, the enemy throwing a grenade, and the reaction to repel it. As far as actors go, most units are too heavy to even consider pushing around. Its slight knockback can supplement jetpacks/jumps, however.

Grapple Gun
This tool provides much needed mobilty options - a challenge Cortex Command has had much difficulty facing with limited vertical movement possibilities. While cumbersome to handle, a mining or infiltrating unit can put it to good use, especially if they don't have a jetpack. It is otherwise a difficult tool to use in the pace of the game.

Constructor
The Constructor doubles as both a surprisingly powerful, infinite use digger that can mine both dirt and metal in a fair amount of time, as well as a clean concrete construction alternative to the Concrete Sprayer that builds concrete squares with any material that you mine. It is well suited for base repair, breaching, or gold mining. It's main drawbacks are that it's not the fastest digging tool available, construction relies on having to destroy some other material first, and it's hefty price at 200 oz, double that of a Heavy Digger.

Riot Shield
While not actually listed as a tool, TradeStar provides the only available shield in the vanilla version of Cortex Command, and as such, it is categorized with having defensive utility. It can be equipped with a single-handed weapon, and otherwise provides light troops with excellent protection. It is exposed in the head, foot, and back regions, but the former two can be mitigated by crouching. It is important to note that reloading while using the shield will pull the shield back, leaving the unit exposed - thus, shieldbearing units with weapons should find safe places to reload.

Tactics
Tools can compose an "engineer" class - a digger, disarmer, scanner, and sidearm can prove to effectively answer non-combat situations.

Providing one or a few of your standard troops with a simple digger can be very helpful on the frontlines for building foxholes, breaching enemy structures, or emergency gold mining.

Consider the Constructor or a combination of a Digger and Concrete Sprayer for a gold-mining Brain robot in order to gain funds and block the mining tunnel to protect your VIP / main source of income.

TradeStar's standard armory consists of basic archetypes of guns - pistols, submachine guns, and shotguns of various degrees. They leave not much to the imagination, but for the most part act in their proper capacity. They are generally outclassed by faction-specific weaponry, so seek alternatives if possible.

Pistol
At a cheap 5oz, the TradeStar Pistol provides a reliably cheap sidearm, with little excuse to not have with its price. However, it's stopping power and damage is beyond abysmal - its effectiveness is limited to finishing wounded, unarmored units when reloading is impossible.

SMG
The SMG takes the role of a standard automatic weapon, boasting decent-to-mediocre stats all around. While other factions undoubtably have their own, better rank-and-file weapons, the SMG is certainly able to compete when used correctly.

Battle Rifle
The Battle Rifle is one of the more unique weapons - boasting only five shots, it features great penetration and good damage, but proves unreliable to kill in it's clip, coupled with a lengthy reload. It's appropriate as a precision rifle - not full combat rifle, nor fit for sniping. It's the most expensive weapon from the stock TradeStar selection at a moderate 50oz.

Shotgun
The TradeStar Shotgun acts just about as normal as any shotgun you can imagine. Six shots to shoot, with each shell reloaded individually leaves varying performance. The spread is tight, but the damage falls off at medium ranges. A good weapon to both maim or kill compared to the other options.

Blunders (Buzz, Pop)
The Blunderbuzz and Blunderpop are both shotgun-type weapons - both holding a single shot, and bearing fast-to-average reload speeds. While the Blunderbuzz has a slightly tighter spread and better damage falloff, it's a poor primary with it's slower reload speed. The Blunderpop in contrast reloads quickly and works in a pinch as an effective fallback weapon, despite being weaker as only the Imperatus Faction has a "shotgun-pistol".

Tactics
The first four weapons all fit for encounters at various ranges - medium, far, and close range respectively. A squad composition with each of these weapons ensures the ability to fill people with lead in about every circumstance.

TradeStar's bomb selection falls in two categories - standard but redundant with other faction weaponry, or specialized and innovative yet rarely employed.

Frag Grenade
This is as generic as it gets - compared to faction grenades of a similar design, it has a quicker detonation of 2.5 seconds. Closer enemies take more damage, and it can damage your own units.

Blue Bomb
Unique to the scenario mission "Zombie Cave", these bombs are pretty simple and act in a similar manner to the aforementioned Frag Grenade. An important point to note - they are classified as impact explosives, and are pretty big items in an actor's hands. A skilled shooter can detonate the bomb before it can be thrown, killing the actor. A poor choice for an explosive.

Remote Explosive
Excellent for laying a trap or breaching doors, this is triggered by a Detonator tool. Can be disarmed by a Disarmer tool to be picked up and used again. Thrown a lot less farther than other grenades.

Anti Personnel Mine
Acts as a single explosive activated when an enemy unit crosses its laser, and it doesn't activate on friendly units crossing it. Can only be disposed by triggering the detonation or using a Disarmer tool. Thrown a lot less farther than other grenades.

Dropship Bombs (Standard, Napalm, Cluster Mine)
Not recommended to be equipped on actors, these bombs are meant for dropships only, flown across the scene, and unleased on top of enemies to decimate them safely.
Standard Bombs act as normal fragmentation explosives.
Napalm Bombs leave fire on the ground, dealing damage over time to units that stay it it. Works as temporary area denial.
Cluster Mine Bombs release a wide layer of mines that trigger by proximity by friendly or hostile units crossing into them. Acts as more difficult-to-remove area denial.

Tactics
If opting to have a Dropship carry bombs and actors at the same time, putting a crab inbetween the orders prevents bombs from being equipped to an actor. It's a lot more preferable than having your Heavy Shotgun unit combust into Napalm on contact with the ground.

To be honest, there's not much incentive solely playing with TradeStar specific actors and equipment - it's not an actual faction, other factions have access to TradeStar equipment, and its relative quality doesn't quite compare to faction-specific weaponry at times. However, in a situation where you are playing only with TradeStar resources, whether it be for fun or for a challenge - there are a couple inherent benefits and strategies you can employ in most skirmishes.

Neutral, Unspecialized Equipment
This is more of a passive aspect to using TradeStar equipment more than anything. With the strong drawback of not having gimmicks or "superweapons" for your use, you can rest assured that each unit you control has a bullet-based weapon and consistant playstyle, with no margin for error like with a rocket launcher killing your own units. Additionally, losing weapons to the enemy isn't a problem because they aren't table-turning weapons - rather, they're inexpensive weapons to prolong the skirmish until you gain the means to end it.

En Masse
TradeStar runs the largest selection of cheap troops to purchase. Between the culled clones and skeletons, a large fighting force is relatively inexpensive to obtain. Consequently, a massive surge of miners can be deployed to boost your economy, pairs of units can cover most of the surface, and reinforcements can be consistantly relied on from how inexpensive they are to obtain.

Volley
With the advent of Build 30 and the squad command system, large hordes became an incredibly viable choice. Taking command of 5+ skeletons equipped with Battle Rifles can result in a sizeable force moving across the map firing what is essentially a sniper-shotgun spread in unison. Groups like this can easily overpower lone, price-equivalent soldiers, as well as stage a strong defensive presence. Keep in mind that heavy-armoured mecha like the Dummy Dreadnaught may survive initial salvos, resulting in it overpowering your lighter units. Explosive weapons and indirect fire weapons can also circumvent it.

Salvage / Excess Funds
Drawn from the first point, not having specialized equipment usually means that enemies will leave your likely slain scout groups with their equipment intact. Recovering those shotguns can enable effective recycling and savings in the bank. In addition, salvaging strong enemy weapons like the Imperetus Sniper Rifle or Coalition Uber Cannon can result in stronger shifts of power - they were expensive, powerful weapons your opponent paid for, and are now yours for free as powerful supplemental weapons. Disposable TradeStar troops thus raises equipment value exponentially as persistant battlefield elements.

War of Attrition
More than anything, TradeStar equipment is built for the long haul. Flooding annoying, inexpensive units, setting down anti-personnel mines and calling in dropship bombings are made to pinch your own wallet and eliminate expensive elements of your opponent. Basically, force your opponent to expend more than they can afford via value trading, then hunt when their coffers run dry. Anti-air Drones in particular are prime choices for winning economic trades - the 250oz drone can effectively take down 300oz Dropships if hidden nearby and deny reinforcements on top of that.

That concludes this guide on Free Trade and TradeStar. Some additions are planned to be implemented into this guide in the near future, such as matchups, typical unit builds, and strategies.
Other (real) faction guides will also be provided in the near future and subsequently linked here.

Coalition

If you would like to see other things covered in this guide at the expense of it being "TL;DR", please comment and I'll look into adding it. Thanks for reading.

4/23/2014 : Added General Strategy Section.
5/3/2017 : Added Constructor tool entry, revised some wording. Attempted to make some comment suggestions more clear.