I've been trying to find the fastest way to earn credits toward a bigger ship, other than bounty hunting in a sidewinder in High REZ zones.
All the grinding has been depressing, bounty hunting in a sidewinder makes about 500K to 1.0M CR per hour, painfully slow waiting for larger ships to show up. In 20 hours of gaming I barely reached 20M credits and then decided to try other parts of the game to see if there was a better or faster way. I outfitted a sidewinder for exploring and boom time/data deliveries, a hauler for 8T mission using the EDDB and plotted routes, and an Eagle for bounty hunting in High/Med REZ or low combat zones (rarely surviving) even when outfitted with max armor, shields, internal module protections (no fuel scoop, no cargo, no planetary explorer, 1D life support, 1D sensors AND MAX 1a power/distributors. The Eagle is fast and good to train for FAoff, and combat tactics for AI up to Master/CobraMKII, anything larger and it can't survive long solo unless you run. Still max BH seems to stay at max of 1M/hr. When I decided to grind for Federation dropship and rank to visit Sol, the missions for aligned Federation factions rarely gave more than 10-20K of reward, taking 15 minutes per local 15-20Ly hop to complete a missions...miserable slow 100K/hour of effort. Rank went to Chief after days of grinding, and I gave up as each level became slower. I tried converting a Hauler to a miner...miserable mining with max of 4-8T cargo, refinery, mining limpets and miserable rate of 100-200K per hour in materials. I tried SRV mining...even worse haul rate and only good for engineer upgrading. I searched USS, did a few pirate hunting missions with Eagle and FSD wake detector and interdictor. Upgraded to Cobra MKIII to do multi-crew, lost my ship several times to inexperience crew gunners hitting un-wanted targets, made less than 500K/hour BH when cost of MKIII replacements added up and huge cost of Notoriety 1, bounty payments. Really stupid logic and no incentive there to do multi-crew. When I crewed on a big Federation Corvette my part of the take of the bounty was 200K/hour and no mission credits for stacked assassination missions or faction bounties...no incentive at all to do multi-crew is such a shame. So finally after a single trip 250 LY out to Thargoid space to explore, see the ruins, burn some more credits in outfitting another hauler for long distance jumps to 28LY and carry an SRV to collect materials, I finally 5 leveled the three engineers and realized it was pitiful to upgrade 1G pulse, beam, and multi-cannon components, I bounced from 30 Million total Credits down to 20 Million for a Cobra MKIII, Viper MKIII and Lakon T-6. Payout rates for local factional missions, bounty hunting and hauling using EDDB stayed the same with ONE exception. Community group hauler missions.
If you bring at least 96 tons to any community group haul you can make the lowest group and 300,000 CR to 1M credits each week. If you make 3 local runs hauling 288 tons of community group components you can make it to the top 75%. Forget going higher...unless you have a HUGE Chieftain or T9-10. Skimmer missions no longer stack, intel data collection mission might pay 50-100K or even 250K if traveling to the destination is 100,000-200,000 LS from the entry system (GD-215) takes 30 minutes and returns 250K again 0.5 Million per hour average. Grinding sucks and the game is increasingly no fun. I did however find a small glimmer of hope...
Community missions in a T-6 can return a little greater return the bounty hunting High Rez in a Sidewinder, Eagle, CobraMKIII, or Viper MKIII.
For the three CG missions this week, to HIP 33368 (Barjavel) and Lambda Arae (Redi Market) you can make 300,000 in both at Redi Market, and with use of a T-6 (cheapest medium hauler 96T) you can achieve the following better than the usual and boring 1.0 Million/hour BH grind.
Haul two 96 ton gold shipments from Aiygzing (Ovinnick) using EDDB to calculate max profit in gold, super-conductors, and indium (basic medicine back), haul for each CG until top 75%.
Haul from HIP 33368 a short haul Indite (96T) 29LY to Pehuti (Ali Point) two hop for a small profit, pick up 96T superconductors at Ali return to Hip 33368 (Barjavel) for 300,000 CR a 20 minute round trip for $1.364 M/hour.
Haul from Hip 33368 a short 1 hop to Agarahma (Barborosa) for a looong...20 minute LS trip in system, hauling back 96T Insulating Membrane (7,000 profit per ton) or take a 6 hop trip to HIP 41526 (Gernsback Hanger) hauling Bertrandite, pick up 90T (max) of Insulating Membrane and 6 superconductors back to HIP 33368 (Barjavel) for 1.65M/hour.
The FINAL surprise was hauling 96T survival equipment from Hip 33368 (Barjavel) for a 30 hop trip to Maia (Darnielles Progress) (interdiction by pirates twice and thargoids twice) to dump a small profit and PICK up $11.0 MILLION 96T cargo of meta-alloy for a 2 hour round trip haul back to Hip 33368 (Barjavel) and net $1.705 Million in cartography (good for one trip only) and $1.59Million in profit for a total of $3.29 Million and a lot of stress scooping, honking, and avoiding interdiction. This nets a first for me of $3.193 million [per hour]...and finally gives me hope that I can get to a 100 Million Anaconda in ONLY 30 more of these intense CG community efforts....way to go FD developers in making Elite Dangerous fun for everyone and not boring (just so you can pretend you love the new C&P rules to keep gamers from making too much profit per hour and looking desperately for cheats and bugs that let some make ! billion in stacked skimmer missions...too bad they are the only ones having fun or enjoying the best parts of the game in a larger ship meant to survive faxction combat rez zones and thargoid attacks... I would be happy if you made sure we could make $5 million per hour in a cobraMKIII, T-6, or Viper MKIII. grinding...grinding...grinding wishing that multi-crew and wing missions were focused on fun and reasonable 5M/Hour.
Please...if you are beginning like me understand we want access to larger shi[p to enjoy the main themes and threads of the game (factions and thargoid story), possible long neutron 250+ LY 10 hour grnding star jumps to Colonia in a python, corvette, or vulture to do combat with thargoids or asp explorer, chieftan to explore and have fun in combat factions and thargoid battles...how long do you really expect a beginner to wait to enjoy the game... 100 hours, 500 hours? At least give us wing missions and multi-crew mission that pay for beginners too.
All the grinding has been depressing, bounty hunting in a sidewinder makes about 500K to 1.0M CR per hour, painfully slow waiting for larger ships to show up. In 20 hours of gaming I barely reached 20M credits and then decided to try other parts of the game to see if there was a better or faster way. I outfitted a sidewinder for exploring and boom time/data deliveries, a hauler for 8T mission using the EDDB and plotted routes, and an Eagle for bounty hunting in High/Med REZ or low combat zones (rarely surviving) even when outfitted with max armor, shields, internal module protections (no fuel scoop, no cargo, no planetary explorer, 1D life support, 1D sensors AND MAX 1a power/distributors. The Eagle is fast and good to train for FAoff, and combat tactics for AI up to Master/CobraMKII, anything larger and it can't survive long solo unless you run. Still max BH seems to stay at max of 1M/hr. When I decided to grind for Federation dropship and rank to visit Sol, the missions for aligned Federation factions rarely gave more than 10-20K of reward, taking 15 minutes per local 15-20Ly hop to complete a missions...miserable slow 100K/hour of effort. Rank went to Chief after days of grinding, and I gave up as each level became slower. I tried converting a Hauler to a miner...miserable mining with max of 4-8T cargo, refinery, mining limpets and miserable rate of 100-200K per hour in materials. I tried SRV mining...even worse haul rate and only good for engineer upgrading. I searched USS, did a few pirate hunting missions with Eagle and FSD wake detector and interdictor. Upgraded to Cobra MKIII to do multi-crew, lost my ship several times to inexperience crew gunners hitting un-wanted targets, made less than 500K/hour BH when cost of MKIII replacements added up and huge cost of Notoriety 1, bounty payments. Really stupid logic and no incentive there to do multi-crew. When I crewed on a big Federation Corvette my part of the take of the bounty was 200K/hour and no mission credits for stacked assassination missions or faction bounties...no incentive at all to do multi-crew is such a shame. So finally after a single trip 250 LY out to Thargoid space to explore, see the ruins, burn some more credits in outfitting another hauler for long distance jumps to 28LY and carry an SRV to collect materials, I finally 5 leveled the three engineers and realized it was pitiful to upgrade 1G pulse, beam, and multi-cannon components, I bounced from 30 Million total Credits down to 20 Million for a Cobra MKIII, Viper MKIII and Lakon T-6. Payout rates for local factional missions, bounty hunting and hauling using EDDB stayed the same with ONE exception. Community group hauler missions.
If you bring at least 96 tons to any community group haul you can make the lowest group and 300,000 CR to 1M credits each week. If you make 3 local runs hauling 288 tons of community group components you can make it to the top 75%. Forget going higher...unless you have a HUGE Chieftain or T9-10. Skimmer missions no longer stack, intel data collection mission might pay 50-100K or even 250K if traveling to the destination is 100,000-200,000 LS from the entry system (GD-215) takes 30 minutes and returns 250K again 0.5 Million per hour average. Grinding sucks and the game is increasingly no fun. I did however find a small glimmer of hope...
Community missions in a T-6 can return a little greater return the bounty hunting High Rez in a Sidewinder, Eagle, CobraMKIII, or Viper MKIII.
For the three CG missions this week, to HIP 33368 (Barjavel) and Lambda Arae (Redi Market) you can make 300,000 in both at Redi Market, and with use of a T-6 (cheapest medium hauler 96T) you can achieve the following better than the usual and boring 1.0 Million/hour BH grind.
Haul two 96 ton gold shipments from Aiygzing (Ovinnick) using EDDB to calculate max profit in gold, super-conductors, and indium (basic medicine back), haul for each CG until top 75%.
Haul from HIP 33368 a short haul Indite (96T) 29LY to Pehuti (Ali Point) two hop for a small profit, pick up 96T superconductors at Ali return to Hip 33368 (Barjavel) for 300,000 CR a 20 minute round trip for $1.364 M/hour.
Haul from Hip 33368 a short 1 hop to Agarahma (Barborosa) for a looong...20 minute LS trip in system, hauling back 96T Insulating Membrane (7,000 profit per ton) or take a 6 hop trip to HIP 41526 (Gernsback Hanger) hauling Bertrandite, pick up 90T (max) of Insulating Membrane and 6 superconductors back to HIP 33368 (Barjavel) for 1.65M/hour.
The FINAL surprise was hauling 96T survival equipment from Hip 33368 (Barjavel) for a 30 hop trip to Maia (Darnielles Progress) (interdiction by pirates twice and thargoids twice) to dump a small profit and PICK up $11.0 MILLION 96T cargo of meta-alloy for a 2 hour round trip haul back to Hip 33368 (Barjavel) and net $1.705 Million in cartography (good for one trip only) and $1.59Million in profit for a total of $3.29 Million and a lot of stress scooping, honking, and avoiding interdiction. This nets a first for me of $3.193 million [per hour]...and finally gives me hope that I can get to a 100 Million Anaconda in ONLY 30 more of these intense CG community efforts....way to go FD developers in making Elite Dangerous fun for everyone and not boring (just so you can pretend you love the new C&P rules to keep gamers from making too much profit per hour and looking desperately for cheats and bugs that let some make ! billion in stacked skimmer missions...too bad they are the only ones having fun or enjoying the best parts of the game in a larger ship meant to survive faxction combat rez zones and thargoid attacks... I would be happy if you made sure we could make $5 million per hour in a cobraMKIII, T-6, or Viper MKIII. grinding...grinding...grinding wishing that multi-crew and wing missions were focused on fun and reasonable 5M/Hour.
Please...if you are beginning like me understand we want access to larger shi[p to enjoy the main themes and threads of the game (factions and thargoid story), possible long neutron 250+ LY 10 hour grnding star jumps to Colonia in a python, corvette, or vulture to do combat with thargoids or asp explorer, chieftan to explore and have fun in combat factions and thargoid battles...how long do you really expect a beginner to wait to enjoy the game... 100 hours, 500 hours? At least give us wing missions and multi-crew mission that pay for beginners too.
