About trading early game. If you think that you're not ready for combat, then do missions with Data Transport or Black Boxes salvage(legal ones). Soon your reputation will grow and more rewarding missions will appear in the list. Then buy your first Hauler/Adder, fit it with Cargo Modules and just do cargo transport missions. There are some planetary bases that want you to transport biowaste to orbital agro-stations, usually 7-15 missions on same station with same destination in another system. Using biowaste-method you can really fast farm your first few millions to buy T6 for example. On T6 with full Cargo modes you can complete up to 10 missions in just 10 minute fly, each missions reward is something like 70-150k. I made my first 5 millions in 2 hours i think using this method.
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Newcomer / Intro Basic Trading - Noob question
Thanks for everyones comments, very interesting the different points of view.. Goes to show, what I'm realising quite quickly, is the vastness of the game and how people like in life have many different views/perceptioins on what to do..
I suppose, as I was an original elite player from the 80's, the trading side was what I remember being quite interesting and almost a go to I guess as its what I was familiar with, but i'm seeing (what with the huge amount of vids on youtube) there are A LOT of other things to do.. Have already been 'bounty assisting' out in the rings of a planet where mineral mining is protected by the police.. very entertainig looking for the police shooting the out of a baddy and then getting a couple shots in in my puny sidewinder and grabbin 200,000 credits ! while dodging huge great big ring particles the size of a mountain.. highly entertaining!!
Do people think the Horizons add on is worth it? Am I right in thinking that this adds the planet landing facitlity?
I suppose, as I was an original elite player from the 80's, the trading side was what I remember being quite interesting and almost a go to I guess as its what I was familiar with, but i'm seeing (what with the huge amount of vids on youtube) there are A LOT of other things to do.. Have already been 'bounty assisting' out in the rings of a planet where mineral mining is protected by the police.. very entertainig looking for the police shooting the out of a baddy and then getting a couple shots in in my puny sidewinder and grabbin 200,000 credits ! while dodging huge great big ring particles the size of a mountain.. highly entertaining!!
Do people think the Horizons add on is worth it? Am I right in thinking that this adds the planet landing facitlity?
I tried this! Brilliant! dodging ring particles the size of a mountain while taking pot shots at baddies and grabbing 200,000 credits bounty!
Now that they've nerfed all the get rich quick schemes, the quickest way to get going is unquestionably bounty farming in the high RES. You get 1mil to 2mil an hour straight out of the box. No missions or trading can get near that. Once you have 3 mil, you upgrade FSD, lighten the ship and fit ADC and DSS, then go scanning water worlds for 10 mil an hour until you have enough to do whatever you want in whatever ship you want. That's if you want to get going quickly, which not everybody does. Some people like to grind for two weeks jumping from system to system trading to make enough for a FSD upgrade.
I'm not up to speed with the terminology and 'stuff to do' in game... can you tell me more about bounty farming in the high res? Fit ADC / DSS?
do you have to have horizons for these? do you need it to go 'scanning water worlds'?
There is the Acronym Guide, right among the stickies in this forum.
"bounty farming" - for every wanted ship you kill, you get the bounty on their head. This also goes if the kill is accomplished by NPC police and you only assist (i.e. hit the wanted ship at least once with a weapon within the last minute or so before it explodes). So, you drop into a RES (resource extration site) with police ships present and follow them around. When thy start shooting a pirate, target that pirate, then wait for your scanner (left side front) to show the target as "wanted", then join the shooting. Don't hit the police or any innocent bystanders, though...
ADC should be ADS, Advanced Discovery Scanner. Triggering that will show you all the astronomical objects inside a system, so you can fly out and scan them with a Detailed Surface Scanner (DSS). If you haven't scanned that planet/star before (and it isn't one of the pre-scanned core systems), you can then sell this scan data at the Cartographics contact in almost any port. Depending on the type of planet, you can get up to 1 million credits (occasionally more) for aech scan (although, to be honest, most systems/planets are dross and won't net you more than 10k).
There are several websites dedicated to finding the known high value worlds, generally known as "road to riches". My favourite is at http://edtools.ddns.net.
No, you don't need Horizons for any of this. Horizons only lets you land on landable planets (which atmospheric planets so far aren't) - but you'll need Horizons if you want access to engineers.
Bounty-farming means destroying wanted ships in Resource Extraction Sites (RES) which can be low or high intensity (activity) or just normal. You can also bounty-hunt (BH) at Navigation Beacons (Nav Beacon).
Disdcovery scanners come in three grades, in increasing range - basic (500ls), intermediate (1000ls) and advanced (everything in the system) ADC = Advanced Discovery Scanner.
DSS is a Detailed Surface Scanner which is used to glean information about an astronomical body (planets and moons really) - it gives you the makeup of elements than can be found on the surface and makeup of the rings - data fdrom a DSS scan (level 3 scan) is worth more when selling the exploration data.
To make the most money from exploration, always fit a DSS and fit an ADS as soon as you can afford it.
Edit - well ninja'd
Yeah, "stealing" those bounties is a good way to start. It earned me enough to buy a T6 Transporter which I flew for quite a long time (Along with a combat Viper to jump into every now and again for a change of pace). That earned me my first 100m. Which gets you your Python. At which point the galaxy is your oyster
And yes, I'd definitely get Horizons. Planetary landings and Engineers are a pretty big facet of the game.
If it exists at all it's effect is so trivial it can be ignored. I have never seen a situation when something appeared to be depleted from actions that were not my own. Even when the game replenished rares, it did so in a way that was completely predictable.
Even if the technical answer is "yes", the practical answer is still "no" for this reason. A solo game is effectively a single player game.
Are you related to D D Harriman at all? - They also can't stand to accept that other people might be correct.
Are you related to D D Harriman at all? - They also can't stand to accept that other people might be correct.
I'll spare your feelings going forward.
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Im also new and started with trading, boom time delivery stuff until I could afford a cobra into which I instantly crammed more cargo space until I get enough credits to outfit it with high tier stuff and go learn the pirates trade (in SP).
What's infuriating me is that there is no such thing as a purchasable trade computer (like in X games) which allows me to check out station supply and demand remotely without having to dock EVERY.SINGLE.ONE just to facecheck if they have some of the stuff stored that I'm looking for in my mission. I also don't know why we can't check the mission board remotely. Docking should just be necessary when you need to load/unload and do maintenance.
After docking the third refinery to see if they had palladium or gold in supply which I need for my current missions I just exited the game. I actually know which one offers them in maximum abundance as it's a system in the bunghole of the galaxy noticeable by the huge amount of credits you get for liquor delivery missions to it. But reaching the station requires 5 real-time minutes just afk trucking and I need to run that route twice to fulfill all missions (which would net me 500-700 k).
What's infuriating me is that there is no such thing as a purchasable trade computer (like in X games) which allows me to check out station supply and demand remotely without having to dock EVERY.SINGLE.ONE just to facecheck if they have some of the stuff stored that I'm looking for in my mission. I also don't know why we can't check the mission board remotely. Docking should just be necessary when you need to load/unload and do maintenance.
After docking the third refinery to see if they had palladium or gold in supply which I need for my current missions I just exited the game. I actually know which one offers them in maximum abundance as it's a system in the bunghole of the galaxy noticeable by the huge amount of credits you get for liquor delivery missions to it. But reaching the station requires 5 real-time minutes just afk trucking and I need to run that route twice to fulfill all missions (which would net me 500-700 k).
Oh good lord. Three pages and NOT ONE OF YOU mentions system economies?
*sigh*
Alright. Economy 101 crash course.
In the galaxy map, you can find the option to filter systems by economy type. Extraction, Refinery, Industry, Agricultural, Terriforming, High Tech, Military, and Tourism.
Each system produces a certain type of good. You can look at the information in the commodities menu in any marketplace. Clicking on an item will display more information on that good on the right hand side of the screen. The most important things you're looking for are the following.
Economies that Produce this Good.
And Economies that Consume this Good.
By knowing which Economies produce and consume say... Gold. You now know which systems to visit to purchase this good. Generally Refineries and Extraction Stations. These systems will not only produce Gold but Gold below Average market value.
Buy low.
Gold is said to be consumed by Industrial and High Tech economies. Therefore by taking it to one of those systems, the station will pay ABOVE market price allowing you to sell at a profit. You try to sell it anywhere else, you'll be lucky to break even but likely will lose money.
Sell high.
FAIR WARNING: You can generally expect to make a profit but there will be the occasional situation where for some reason, the good isn't in demand despite being the economy that consumes it. This is rare so you can safely trade at a profit but if it does happen, the game isn't broken. Just note not to try and trade that item there again.
Economy 102.
Not only will the good tell you what types of economies produce that good, it may also tell you WHERE THAT EXACT STATION IS GETTING IT'S SUPPLY. In the case of consumption, it will tell you the exact system the good is getting Imported from. In the case of supply. It will tell you the exact systems the good is getting Exported to. You can see these colorful trails on the galaxy map once you've visited a system and accessed it's marketplace.
Just follow the trail and the money.
Hybrid stations and multi-economy systems:
Some stations (noticeably High Tech stations) have two economies. In many cases one may be consuming the goods that one economy produces so don't expect to find what you're looking for. Some systems have multiple stations and each station may be a different economy. (My home system is an Agricultural system but has two stations. One is Agricultural and the other is Industrial.)
You can always tell what economy a station is on the system map by selecting it.
Economy 103:
Certain goods are only produced in certain areas. This can be affected by which minor faction is in control of the station and the type of goverment. It may be determined by whether the station in question is in space or planetside. It may be that the good is only produced in a certain system or a certain radius around that system. Again all this information can be found on the right hand side of the screen when you click a good. BE WARY OF ACCEPTING MISSIONS THAT DEMAND THIS KIND OF GOOD.
Using these rules I've been able to trade at a profit without the use of exploits or third party tools. Sure it's not millions upon millions of credits but profit none the less.
I'm aware of all of those functions, the jist is that refinery doesn't equal horrendous amounts of gold stored for each one of them. Every refinery has its own distribution. I can analyze the gold trade route on the galaxy map or check where it's imported from at a station, but
1. That doesn't tell me where on the trade route I have to dock at
2. Or guarantee that the place they import it from has enough for my needs. So it would be neat if I could just enter a system and browse their stockpiles at a distance. That way I don't follow say a gold route, dock on all the refineries on the way which is very time consuming only to find out that they have 1 unit of it stored.
I think the game sorely lacks the out-of-station info gathering and a function that just tells me nearby places to grab a resource. I have tried using the website with the resources lists but that doesn't tell me about nearby systems. It's little use to me if I can find the best price if it's 40 hops away.
1. That doesn't tell me where on the trade route I have to dock at
2. Or guarantee that the place they import it from has enough for my needs. So it would be neat if I could just enter a system and browse their stockpiles at a distance. That way I don't follow say a gold route, dock on all the refineries on the way which is very time consuming only to find out that they have 1 unit of it stored.
I think the game sorely lacks the out-of-station info gathering and a function that just tells me nearby places to grab a resource. I have tried using the website with the resources lists but that doesn't tell me about nearby systems. It's little use to me if I can find the best price if it's 40 hops away.
Five whole minutes, really? Or was that a typo?
Played solo for a couple of years.
Mostly trading.
Goods do deplete in solo. What is available 2 days ago is gone today. Saw that a lot last fortnight. One station's metal was completely gone.
I have found 2 systems where i can make 3,500 credits from trading Palladium. Only 20 or so at a time. I had to log off and on for a whole day to get 128 in my hold.
It was fun, but the several pirates who wanted it were FUNNER ...
I don't recommend this type of trading to a Noob, but if you have a small ship, with about 20 ton cargo, then it would be okay. (a small ship with a high speed)
Mostly trading.
Goods do deplete in solo. What is available 2 days ago is gone today. Saw that a lot last fortnight. One station's metal was completely gone.
I have found 2 systems where i can make 3,500 credits from trading Palladium. Only 20 or so at a time. I had to log off and on for a whole day to get 128 in my hold.
It was fun, but the several pirates who wanted it were FUNNER ...
I don't recommend this type of trading to a Noob, but if you have a small ship, with about 20 ton cargo, then it would be okay. (a small ship with a high speed)