The history of money making in Elite Dangerous

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

Neither have I, but I feel the game was more enjoyable in those early months because of this. Took me half a year to go from Sidewinder to Conda, and I was playing a lot back then (version 2.3). Easy money is not a good thing for the game IMO.

Totally agree, easy money spoils a game like elite.

 

[rhiz]

The first exploit I remember was the "Seeking Goods" traders. Stoopid trade profits from a 15ls trip, but still nothing compared to VOpals

I think that the best board that I've seen as a hauler was 150 million for one jump and a 5 or 6 minute round trip. How does that compare? That was pretty exceptional, but I was probably averaging 30 million per trip in a high capacity T-9... that's one jump and back. Not quite as predictable and consistent perhaps due to state changes, but the money I made as a trucker was definitely in the same ball park, and it was legit.

 

[Stealthie]

Would it be cheating to just browse through DTEA's back catalogue of videos?

Also, the the timeline is going to start to look a bit dull now we've got VO mining.

 

[Jenner]

The very earliest money making scheme after release I can remember was an exploit that allowed you to gain infinite money provided you didn't mind sitting around clicking a mouse button for hours. lol. (FD squashed that bug pretty quickly).

 

[Lightspeed]

I'm waiting for Base Building, when I can mine bitcoins

 

[sgurr]

One I haven't seen mentioned is the thargoid cargo gathering rewards from Obsidian Orbital. You could go get as much cargo as you could stack without corroding your ship on the way back to the station (didn't make it once ) and hand them in, undock, redock hand them in etc. ~20mil per 4t. The gathering and getting back to the station was fun.

And another shoutout for the long range smuggling missions, they were genuinely fun and risky.

I think credits were slow at the start, but with a bit of knowledge they're meaningless now.

Edit: clarity

 

[CMDR Cknarf]

Sothis/Ceos crap hauling was good for awhile. What was that, like mid to late 2016?

17 Draconis massacre stacking was either late ‘16 or early ‘17 I think. Good times.

Quince scan jobs/skimmers last year? I didn’t really get in on that one.

 

[Goose4291]

One of the earliest exploits was to use your founders world permit to buy a ship, fly to a neighbouring one and sell for the 10% mark up.

 

[CLG 6]

I can' say I've found an exploit but I haven't looked for one either. I made $30 million recently on a massacre mission but I had to get 81 ships in the Colonia region which has no conflict zones - all haz res sites. Best part of that was becoming familiar with a new Krait MK II.

 

[Yaffle]

One of the earliest exploits was to use your founders world permit to buy a ship, fly to a neighbouring one and sell for the 10% mark up.

This isn't quite right - selling a ship always had a drop in price. It was quite convoluted but involved buying a module at Jameson's (discount) then selling it at Jameson's - bug, was sold for full price. Rinse and repeat.

FD removed all credits made by this method.

 

[d8veh]

I still remember when the game released, we were performing missions for a mere pittance... took forever to really get anywhere.

People these days have it sooooooo much easier.

Right from the beginning, you could get an Anaconda within 24 hours. That was the most expensive ship in the game. There was no engineering, so no mindless and futile hours wasted hunting for materials. You could have PvP battles based on your skill as a pilot. All that has gone now. The game was definitely easier then. I can remember guys playing for two years and never getting past a Cobra. The only thing easier now is travelling because of the increase in jump range. I can remember crossing the Formadine Rift and wondering whether I was going to get stranded. I had to keep back-tracking because I couldn't jump far enough to go forwards. Now you can cross in one jump.

 

[d8veh]

This isn't quite right - selling a ship always had a drop in price. It was quite convoluted but involved buying a module at Jameson's (discount) then selling it at Jameson's - bug, was sold for full price. Rinse and repeat.

FD removed all credits made by this method.

You're wrong there. You could buy a Cobra, sell all the modules, then sell the ship and make 16,000cr profit. I can remember testing that. It probably worked for other ships, but I think the 16,000 was constant. there was an explanation why it happened, but I can't remember what it was. I think is was fixed in 2.0 or the update after.

 

[CmdrZaratan]

I forget exactly how it worked, but if you had a starting Cobra Mk III from the Kickstarter in Gamma you could repeatedly sell the components to make cash. I made 150M in 2 hours so I could test fly a well specced Python. Turned out the Python's shields didn't work properly (Once again I forget exactly what was going on there, but I vaguely recall the shields would drop every time you jumped).

I wiped and then progressed normally after about a week of stuffing around with my ill gotten gains.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Sorry, its name is Pinguin Asp Explorer

I approve.

 

[Yaffle]

You're wrong there. You could buy a Cobra, sell all the modules, then sell the ship and make 16,000cr profit. I can remember testing that. It probably worked for other ships, but I think the 16,000 was constant. there was an explanation why it happened, but I can't remember what it was. I think is was fixed in 2.0 or the update after.

I think both may have worked. As in the module swap I describe was right, I never heard of the ship swap, but that's not to say it is wrong.

 

[DMaster]

For me the big money makers in the Summer of last year were passenger runs (Smeaton, Rhea etc) and later in Autumn it moved to the high value goods wing supply missions. I did do a few Skimmer mission stacks, probably around May last year (I think).

Earlier than that I was probably working out which end of a multicannon to point at an NPC.

The original and really good bulk passenger runs between Smeaton and around were in the year before, FD nerfed it at the end of 2017. Since then we had the not so good passenger runs.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

The original and really good bulk passenger runs between Smeaton and around were in the year before, FD nerfed it at the end of 2017. Since then we had the not so good passenger runs.

There was still some money to be made back then (at least it was a lot to me at the time), but if I did it post-nerf I'm happy to be corrected on this.

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

say whaaat?

 

[B1rdy]

Also, the the timeline is going to start to look a bit dull now we've got VO mining.

FDevs policy is really weird. Up to that point they were very eager to stop unbalanced money making asap, only to implement the most unbalanced way to make money the game has ever seen intentionally. I suspect this decision has been made not with the best interest of game mechanics but from a sales perspective.

 

[babelfisch]

FDevs policy is really weird. Up to that point they were very eager to stop unbalanced money making asap, only to implement the most unbalanced way to make money the game has ever seen intentionally. I suspect this decision has been made not with the best interest of game mechanics but from a sales perspective.

Well that's what years of forum whining gets you, lots of people complained that making money is too much of a grind over the last years. Be careful what you wish for...
I absolutely agree that the current balance is not good for the game though.