can someone help me with making money or trade routes?

I checked out "Quince" yesterday to see what the fuss is about and sure enough you can make 50mil per hour doing surface scan missions no combat involved. It's also probably the best Empire rank grind and mindlessly boring. DO IT and join the mostly harmless Cutter club. I hope this is of some help seems your google is broked.[where is it]

Edit- You need about 5mil for donation missions to open up the rep to get the missions or some exploration data.

Edit 2-FD effectively kills multicrew with combat rank scaled rewards while leaving in a way to go from Sidewinder to Anaconda in a day and Cutter inside of a week.[wacko]
 
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does anyone know any good trade routes that will make me a good amount of money on each trade. or any other methods to make money?

Bluford Orbital, starter system LH 3447. Get friendly with the local factions and you can pull 1M Cr for a one hop jump to deliver beer/wines/spirits.

Note: I'm in a Python, so my cargo capacity is probably playing a role here. But I've seen 500,000 Cr runs to the same place for a few as 24 items.

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I checked out "Quince" yesterday to see what the fuss is about and sure enough you can make 50mil per hour doing surface scan missions no combat involved. It's also probably the best Empire rank grind and mindlessly boring. DO IT and join the mostly harmless cutter club. I hope this is of some help seems your google is broked.[where is it]

Edit- You need about 5mil for donation missions to open up the rep to get the missions or some exploration data.

What's actually involved in surface scan missions? I see them but I've never taken one yet. I assume it's "land, deploy SRV, go to [x], scan [x], return data"?
 
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trade profits highly depend on the state of market controlling minor factions.

there are over 30 commodities, which can generate >2000 cr/t profit, if imported and exported from and to the right markets in the right states. from grain with a purchase price of 48 cr/t from an agricultural market in boom and sell price up to 2088 cr/t at a huge population in the state of famine... to insulating membranes traded between refineries in boom and high tech economies in boom with a profit of up to 5000 cr/t.

best route i have personally scouted and run was a 2 jumps 6100/cr/t profit a-b-a route, never showed up on any third party sites, and was stabile for 4 days.

as states can change daily, there are no fixed routes.

a serious alternative if you don't like to scout your own routes and don't like to look into which commodities generate massive profit under which circumstances, is taking a t6/AspE/python to a boom-system and run 1-jump trade missions. bring something back for additional profit. once you are allied with the faction in boom, it's a goldrush.

a very different good money earner is sightseeing passenger missions. get a t6 or AspE, fit a single first class cabin, and go to a tourism economy in boom.
 
What's actually involved in surface scan missions? I see them but I've never taken one yet. I assume it's "land, deploy SRV, go to [x], scan [x], return data"?

you'll see a "searchzone" on the planet, which you need to investigate from your ship till you find the surface installation, after that it's pretty much like you describe.
 
you'll see a "searchzone" on the planet, which you need to investigate from your ship till you find the surface installation, after that it's pretty much like you describe.

Right-o, thanks. Might make a nice change from beer running :)
 

Yaffle

Volunteer Moderator
Not the most profitable, but easiest to spot are 'outbreaks'. Filter the map by system status and find any in outbreak. Hone it down to the faction concerned, their station will be in outbreak. Your next task is to find somewhere close that sells basic medicines. You can do this either by going to the outbreak and seeing from where they are imported, or a bit of a fly around, or a look on the data for 'main exports'. Typically basic medicines cost ₢200-₢300 and sell for upwards of ₢3,700 in an outbreak zone. Check out the markets for anything profitable on the return trip.

When the outbreak ends, go to the next one.

You'll be sort of like a highly mercenary Medcines Sans Frontiers.
 
how do i get surface scan missions? do i have to be at a certain rank with the faction?

no special rank needed, you'll gain reputation by doing them, which will allow you to take the better paying ones.

the more serious problem is to find a system which is generating them costantly, quince does so for some very special reasons:

- quince is out of the bubble, so there are no other shortrange missions
- quince has only 1 landable, so all missions are generated for the same planet
- quince has a tourism/agricultural economy, but delivery missions aren't generated in a system
- quince generates no kill pirates, no salvage etc. pp. missions for its economy type.

etc.

there are very few other systems similar to quince.

when i went to quince some months ago (and found those missions and filed a ticket for exploit, as you can easily make 30 mio per run with stacked missions, and installations are spawned in the same location on each other, and you finish several missions with one scan .... funny to see, but surely not working as intended), i used passenger missions to the 2 local tourism beacons to get allied with all factions in no time... i just filled a cheap ship with all kind of cabins, and flew a minute to the beacons from jeffrie's high.
 
no special rank needed, you'll gain reputation by doing them, which will allow you to take the better paying ones.

the more serious problem is to find a system which is generating them costantly, quince does so for some very special reasons:

- quince is out of the bubble, so there are no other shortrange missions
- quince has only 1 landable, so all missions are generated for the same planet
- quince has a tourism/agricultural economy, but delivery missions aren't generated in a system
- quince generates no kill pirates, no salvage etc. pp. missions for its economy type.

etc.

there are very few other systems similar to quince.

when i went to quince some months ago (and found those missions and filed a ticket for exploit, as you can easily make 30 mio per run with stacked missions), i used passenger missions to the 2 local tourism beacons to get allied with all factions in no time... i just filled a cheap ship with all kind of cabins, and flew a minute to the beacons from jeffrie's high.

They have obviously made a half hearted attempt to nerf the system since you visited it by locking the missions behind more rep and halving the rewards. Personally I have nothing against it, people can play however they want but it kind of erks me that they nerf promising things like multi crew because of exploit worries then leave in this slap in the face.
 
Not the most profitable, but easiest to spot are 'outbreaks'. Filter the map by system status and find any in outbreak. Hone it down to the faction concerned, their station will be in outbreak. Your next task is to find somewhere close that sells basic medicines. You can do this either by going to the outbreak and seeing from where they are imported, or a bit of a fly around, or a look on the data for 'main exports'. Typically basic medicines cost ₢200-₢300 and sell for upwards of ₢3,700 in an outbreak zone. Check out the markets for anything profitable on the return trip.When the outbreak ends, go to the next one.You'll be sort of like a highly mercenary Medcines Sans Frontiers.
I am a pure trader and I do this one quite a bit. No matter what you do, trading is not the path to great wealth in this game. Sometimes there will be a great run; but that is the rare exception. If you enjoy trading, it is sufficient; however, if you are looking for fast, large, payouts, look into something other than trading.
 
Edit 2-FD effectively kills multicrew with combat rank scaled rewards while leaving in a way to go from Sidewinder to Anaconda in a day and Cutter inside of a week.[wacko]

Nah - its getting nerfed in the next patch (16APR17). Only 3 missions can be stacked at a time effectively killing both Scan missions and Massacre missions.

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does anyone know any good trade routes that will make me a good amount of money on each trade. or any other methods to make money?

Here is the fishing rod:

EDDB - Select Loop Trades

https://eddb.io/trade/loops

Enter your desired setting into the parameters section (your current jump range, distance you are prepared to fly to a station [I usually select 500ls], stock levels etc) and hit 'Find'.

Fly to the system(s) shown. Trade Goods... You should be able to make 3000cr per Ton this way.

DONT fly without insurance (preferably at least 2 or 3x insurance). Ship destruction will cost you our cargo too...

May the Gods of Credit always be with you :)
 
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I still like rare goods - and keep a large number of them as bookmarks.
I'll start by looking at which rare goods are closest to me, load up on commodities that sell best at that location, and head there, then sell off whatever I happened to fill up with, pick up a load of rare goods, determine what the next stop will be, fill my remaining cargo space with whatever will sell best there, and head there. Once more, I sell my bulk cargo, buy up whatever rare items they have to offer, and repeat this whole process until I'm full or as close to full of rare goods as I can get and then finally sell those off somewhere else.

Here's a short for example:

If I start in Sol, and head to Leesti:

Hydrogen Fuel is the best-seller at George Lucas station, so I'll take 424 tons of it out there, sell that for ~10k in profit, pick up 14 tons of Leestian Evil Juice, and then head for Lave Station in Lave.
Performance Enhancers are a good seller at Lave Station, so I'll fill my remaining 407 tons of space with these, head to Lave Station, sell Performance Enhancers for ~524k profit, pick up 7 tons of Lavian Brandy, and pick my next destination - let's say, Delta Pavonis, padding my inventory with 400 tons of wine to sell at Hooper relay for ~46k, and pick up 24 tons of Pavonis Ear Grubs... rinse and repeat, until I'm full of rare goods, then sell the whole mess at some distant port - like Bowell City in Moyot - and then I'll head back to where I started in Sol, with 424 tons of Liquor to sell for 176k in profit, and call it a done trade run.
 
I've found Thorium is a good money maker from Large refinery surface ports...best sold to high population, Hi tech stations (not in boom for some reason). Average about 1.5k per ton.
 
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My style of trading isn't for everyone and it's certainly not the way to land the huge windfall profits some folks talk about but over time it does pull in consistently high returns.

1: Look at the trade tools like eddb to identify "hot" loops and AVOID THEM LIKE THE PLAGUE. They are getting swarmed by players in other instances and their profits will rapidly decline. Like a loop that is being reported as generating 5k/ton/loop can be hammered flat into 2k/ton/loop or less in a matter of hours. They are also probably attracting pirates since they can read the output of those tools too. That may not be a concern if you're not flying in open, of course, but since I frequently do fly in open, my play strategy is always as if I was.

2: Actively prospect systems in states where certain goods are more profitable. Medicines to outbreaks has already been mentioned.

3: Try and build multi-hop loops rather than A<->B trading. Any A<->B loop will eventually get reported on the web tools and become a place to avoid. Most of the third party tools out there cannot easily find a decent four or five stop loop - you CAN use them to build one but you'll take almost as long to do that as you would actively prospecting systems in-game, so why not spend the time flying your ship rather than your browser? Ideally you're looking for an extended multi-station loop where every stop nets you at least 2k/ton profit on whatever you're hauling there. If each leg of the loop can make you 3k/ton or more even better. You CAN accept deadhead legs between endpoints of two high-paying ones but keep them to a minimum of you can, because they very quickly erode your earning speed.

4: Avoid trading legs where you have to refuel midway. Stopping to scoop or even worse having to stop off at an intermediate station eats time, gives the NPCs (or player pirates) more chance to interdict you and even if you successfully escape every one that's still time when your ship isn't earning. By all means pack along a fuel scoop while prospecting and not hauling much, but once you have identified a good route you should be able to run it with the scoop in storage and a cargo rack in that slot instead.

5: Once a loop starts to deplete (this happens much more slowly on multi-hop routes than A<->B runs but eventually it does, particularly if you're running it with a big ship) up sticks and move on. Find another one. If the run you are leaving depended on BGS states for its profitability and those states have expired then discard it without a second thought. The BGS states are sufficiently fickle that there's no guarantee that loop will ever be "good" again. If, on the other hand, it did NOT depend on a particular BGS state then save it, it will return to profitability in a while. You can come back in a week or two and run it again. Eventually you'll have notes on four or five potentially interconnected loops where you're guaranteed to find one of them acceptably profitable at any given time.

6: So now you've found yourself a honey-hole with several interconnected loops where no matter what one of them will always pay well. Watch the following things: Player traffic (in the station traffic reports) - if it upticks on a particular leg of your loop then that leg has probably become part of a "hot" A<->B run and is about to get swarmed. Switch to a different loop until the other guys have steamrollered that leg, moved on and it has recovered. Faction and PP influence - even if you take no part in BGS manipulation or PP, changes in these can make huge differences to what's profitable (or even legal) where. I would NOT suggest a trading ship get anywhere near taking an active part in PP but if a particular BGS faction is "good" for you and you see their influence slipping, maybe take a little time out to run some trade missions for them and shore them up a bit. Since you're almost certainly already on their good side, some of these can pay well enough for it to be worth your while.

7: Shut up. Seriously. Don't announce where any of your saved loops are or even which bit of the galaxy they happen to be in. For as long as it's yours and yours alone, it will be making you more money for longer than it would if anyone else was flying it too.
 
I checked out "Quince" yesterday to see what the fuss is about and sure enough you can make 50mil per hour doing surface scan missions no combat involved. It's also probably the best Empire rank grind and mindlessly boring. DO IT and join the mostly harmless Cutter club. I hope this is of some help seems your google is broked.[where is it]

Edit- You need about 5mil for donation missions to open up the rep to get the missions or some exploration data.


Edit 2-FD effectively kills multicrew with combat rank scaled rewards while leaving in a way to go from Sidewinder to Anaconda in a day and Cutter inside of a week.[wacko]

Before doing that, passenger missions to elite exploration rank.

No time now though. Update is killing it all.
 
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