My experience of Colonia, and the surrounding systems, was that there are a surprising amount of lucrative missions available but that there's a lack of ships and good quality parts available there so take what you think you're going to need with you.
Regarding missions and making money, I stayed long enough to become allied with a few factions and most of them were, eventually, offering missions to haul a Python-load of stuff to nearby systems (~10Ly) and paid between Cr5m and Cr10m per mission.
I was just running data-delivery missions in a Viper 3 which I bought out there so I couldn't take those missions but if you flew out there in something like a Python, AspX or Keelback you could probably make way more money than you could make running similar missions within the bubble.
I forget what it's called but there's a surface outpost in Colonia which seems to have a decent stock of stuff like Cargo racks, weapons and equipment.
Looked like you could probably rig a ship for exploration in the bubble, fly it out to Colonia and then put all your exploration parts in storage and rig your ship for cargo-hauling, mining or bounty-hunting using parts you can buy locally.
Overall, it seemed like there were plenty of opportunities to make money from running missions, bounty-hunting and mining in the area, there's a small variety of low-tier ships for sale and a reasonable supply of parts available.
There's always the nagging worry that you're limited to vanilla parts, though.
You won't be taking your ship to an engineer after upgrading your thrusters or power plant etc.
Also, you need to have a BIG wad of credits if you plan on having another ship transferred out to Colonia.
Figure on the transfer fee being at least 2x the value of your ship.
It would have cost me (IIRC) around Cr50m to transfer my Vulture out there, CR80m to transfer my Keelback, Cr200m for my Python, Cr250m for my T9 or my FdL and a whopping Cr500m for Cutter (which is rigged for trading and
not a ship I've spent a heap of cash on).
Boringly predictable as this might be, the ship I'd take to Colonia would probably be a Python, for it's cargo capacity and it's ability to land on platforms.
If you want to go BHing in Colonia, you can buy a Viper 3 there and upgrade it adequately to allow RES-hunting.
And, if you're heading out to Colonia any time soon, wave if you see a clapped-out Sidewinder heading in the opposite direction.
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