How are you guys not losing tons of money?

[zarrazee]

I'll admit that I'm out of the loop on many things in Elite. Got myself a new battlestation at home and wanted to start Elite again.. I went for a Mother Gaia mission to eliminate a pirate in a system ROSS.. I went to the system ROSS and looked for this pirate for an hour, scanning every ships I could scan in supercruise, but I was not able to find him..... After a while I got bored, because a million payout check for a pirate that takes HOURS to find, is...... imbalanced? So anyways, I tried to interdict a few harmless NPC's, and I failed the interdiction every time. Don't know why they are so hard to interdict. Failed every time.. So I went to the NAV beacons to shoot down some wanted NPC's or someone with a bounty. Found an NPC with a bounty and I shot her down, and immediatly I got shot down too.. And I lost almost 5.000.000 (five million) credits in insurance cost on my Python.. I had played for THREE hours without being able to earn a single coin, but losing five million in an instant...

This is happening everytime I try to start playing Elite again.. And to be honest, this is what's keeping me from playing Elite all together, because I'm afraid to lose all of my money... How the heck am I supposed to play this game and feel like I'm actually gaining something? I don't want to be doing trading all the time.. I don't have the funds to die all the time... I'm not able to do bounty missions... And if I'm lucky enough to do the bounty mission, there is a risk for me to lose all of my millions in an instant.. So please, if you have ANY good and helpful advice for me, please share... I really want to be start playing again....

o7 CMDR. As others have said, sometimes you need to go backwards, before you go forwards. I suggest think about what you want to do, then get a small ship to do that task. If you want any help in-game, add me as a friend if you want.

CMDR Zarra Zarson

 

[BL1P]

Hi op.

What most people tend to do is exploit the game until they can afford to die thousands of times.
Google and Youtube will help you find the current exploits.
Dont worry Fdev dont do anything about the exploited credits, Its allowed !

Happy searching!

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I know, right? Took me months to get a Python, and have never lost it. But then I didn't try taking on assignation missions until just recently. And I use a highly engineered Corvette or Python to do it.

Wandering into a little understood situation with a rather expensive ship is just asking for it IMO. But then maybe I'm more cautious than most.

I was doing wing missions solo in a Python. It was hard, involved a lot of running and dodging, but pulled it off about 50% of the time.

 

[Z0mbieBabyJesus]

Honking the ADS does not currently work for WING-Missions, it does work for regular non-wing-missions though. I used it several times yesterday.

Actually that's not true. I've only had it work with an ads honk for a non-wing mission once over the past week. I'm wondering if its only working when you use the ads while in the time frame the pirate is supposed to be there.

 

[wrmiller]

You can be a newb' at a particular aspect of the game but you should also have the self-awareness to realise that something became a train-wreck because you don't know what you're doing, and then ask for help about that thing, rather than just doing the same thing over and over or rage-quitting.

I have 3300+ hours in the game now, and am still a newb' at many aspects of this game.

If a person learns something from the 'mistake', then it's all good. My personal lesson was way back when I was still playing D&D (remember that one?). Came upon a door with some stairs leading down to who-knows-what. I promptly rolled my dice and commented that I was running down the stairs, drawing my sword. The DM rolled his dice, looked at me with this little grin on his face and told me that my torch just went out. Oh crap...

I no longer 'run down the stairs'.

 

[CMDR DAVID187]

I'll admit that I'm out of the loop on many things in Elite. Got myself a new battlestation at home and wanted to start Elite again.. I went for a Mother Gaia mission to eliminate a pirate in a system ROSS.. I went to the system ROSS and looked for this pirate for an hour, scanning every ships I could scan in supercruise, but I was not able to find him..... After a while I got bored, because a million payout check for a pirate that takes HOURS to find, is...... imbalanced? So anyways, I tried to interdict a few harmless NPC's, and I failed the interdiction every time. Don't know why they are so hard to interdict. Failed every time.. So I went to the NAV beacons to shoot down some wanted NPC's or someone with a bounty. Found an NPC with a bounty and I shot her down, and immediatly I got shot down too.. And I lost almost 5.000.000 (five million) credits in insurance cost on my Python.. I had played for THREE hours without being able to earn a single coin, but losing five million in an instant...

This is happening everytime I try to start playing Elite again.. And to be honest, this is what's keeping me from playing Elite all together, because I'm afraid to lose all of my money... How the heck am I supposed to play this game and feel like I'm actually gaining something? I don't want to be doing trading all the time.. I don't have the funds to die all the time... I'm not able to do bounty missions... And if I'm lucky enough to do the bounty mission, there is a risk for me to lose all of my millions in an instant.. So please, if you have ANY good and helpful advice for me, please share... I really want to be start playing again....

anybody who knows me will say I'm a complete noob. This however is impossible to happen even for an idiot like me. You clearly cannot fight (neither can i!) and you cannot escape (i can) . Please learn to play, even the best pvpers you can escape from, Nevermind npc's!

 

[Werewolf13]

Your python makes a great armed trader. Any of the T ships are great traders. Most shipyards you will find a trade vessel.

True except for one thing.

777 claimed he makes 50 mil in 15 minutes and the implication was he does it regularly. Even with a T-9 setup with 750t of space and assuming 10,000 profit/ton and a loop between stations that's only 15 Mil per completed loop.

I been playing ED for 4 years and I like to know where you can find any loop where you can average 35,000/ton profit moving 750t every 15 minutes.

There's some pretty smart and lucky people playing ED - I'm not one of 'em. I'm tempted to call on 777's claim but won't if he'll explain it. Otherwise it's one of those - "It didnt' happen without pictures deals".

 

[Spacecat]

A lot of the assassination missions, bounty hunting missions, and scan missions are a hassle because they are borked, or because of the new crime system. Hauling cargo or passengers till you die of boredom is far more effective as a money earner.

 

[Red Anders]

Mainly by not getting my ship blown up and only going on killing sprees in anarchy systems.

 

[Chaparral]

Hey OP. I'll wing up with you any time and help with any assassination mission. Danicus or Vanilla Sweet.

They are fun once you get the hang of them.

 

[777Driver]

True except for one thing.

777 claimed he makes 50 mil in 15 minutes and the implication was he does it regularly. Even with a T-9 setup with 750t of space and assuming 10,000 profit/ton and a loop between stations that's only 15 Mil per completed loop.

I been playing ED for 4 years and I like to know where you can find any loop where you can average 35,000/ton profit moving 750t every 15 minutes.

There's some pretty smart and lucky people playing ED - I'm not one of 'em. I'm tempted to call on 777's claim but won't if he'll explain it. Otherwise it's one of those - "It didnt' happen without pictures deals".

I play about 2-3 hours a week max at the moment if I'm lucky, so I wouldn't call that regular. Nothing complicated about it, minimum cargo space required is 752 tonnes, accepting minimum 7 million per 180 tonnes hauling weapons and precious metals (in Boom state/allied/Industrial/ Refinery) combined with Alien tech haulage.

Minimum per jump should be around 30 million, on a good run with alien tech you are bringing in 70+ million per run. However you can't just sit there all day making 70 million per run 24/7, mission are generated based on stock levels. When not in Boom I go exploring or work on upgrading the fleet.

 

[rekurzion]

OP, keep at interdictions. there is a skill to them but once you have unlocked it, like fa/off, the game opens up. being able to interdict anything or win any interdiction is invaluable. its the cheapest way to fight another player without ammo rebuy or risk to ship / cargo. type of ship matters on both ends of an interdiction but a python is nimble to win any of them.

some tips for interdictions:

- keep engine power at max and 75% throttle during an interdicition.

- i primarily use pitch and yaw with very little roll if any. the yaw is deceptive as some ships will whip you in one direction hard, like the anaconda, but as long as you stay somewhat on path you won't lose much ground. keep yawing in the correct direction and you will get back on track. maybe this is where you use a little roll. this technique also helps you keep your ship relatively close to your previous flight path before being interdicted. you will find you have much more control then you would think (you can do things like whip your would be attacker into a star if youre good enough).

my suggestion is to dedicate a gaming session to interdictions. go into an anarchy system, snuggle into cobra or something with low rebuy and interdict everything you see. start with harmless and mostly harmless and then competent. you will begin to notice the differences in how npc's will fight interdictions and your skill will sharpen. work your way up. if you can win any elite npc interdiction you can win any human interdiction.

 

[Devari]

I Make around 50 million every 15 minutes trucking in a bulk freighter. Lost 40 million in 30mins fighting in a CZ in open a few weeks back.. I stick to trucking or fighting NPC’s, PvP is expensive.

What is your actual sustained earning rate once you've found an appropriate system that is generating the required missions? I'm guessing it's nowhere near 200 mil/hr including travel and mission generation time. The most I ever made consistently in Elite was around 30 mil/hr or so doing Palin missions in my Asp before they were removed.

I also notice from your screenshots that you appear to be flying a shieldless T9. How is your ship not trollbait? I'm assuming you play in Open here of course and weren't just in silent running for some reason.

 

[777Driver]

@Devari - Apologies typing on my phone..

I have 4 T9's, each one based at one of my major earning hubs in the galaxy, at any one time at least one of those hubs will be high earners for me.

My main hub in the Pleiades guarentees me 30 mill per trip, up to 70mill+ per trip when combined with alien tech haulage. Each jump is around 4ly on average, takes a few minutes to load up, 8 mins from
Port to port. I'll sometimes fly back empty, or haul regular cargo.

As far as flying shieldles in open, been doing it for 4 years. A cmdr has to successfully interdict me before they can kill me, there are plenty of ways to prevent an interdiction, and plenty of ways to survive a successful interdiction. Reverb cascades and penetrator payload are a traders best friend.


Open isn't anywhere near as bad as people make out. Even if I did get killed, it's no big deal, you learn from your mistakes, rebuy is nothing vs the earning potential of the Cutter + T9

 

[Werewolf13]

777: Saw your post about $50M in 15 and how you do it.

What the *(&()... I'm allied with all factions at my home station and have a trader rank of Tycoon. It is always in boom along with just about every system in a 20LY radius of where I am. Home station is a high tech station. I have never ever seen missions like shown on your screen - ever. You're the real deal.

I'm guessing I don't see those kind of high paying hauling missions is because I'm only Tycoon rated and where I am in the bubble. Now I just have to find a place that generates those things.

 

[True Phoenix]

become allied with as many factions as possible, each faction will then offer very high paying haulage trips. I do a couple when on, as warm up, gets 15-18m cr in 20 mins.

 

[Strangepork]

I'll admit that I'm out of the loop on many things in Elite. Got myself a new battlestation at home and wanted to start Elite again.. I went for a Mother Gaia mission to eliminate a pirate in a system ROSS.. I went to the system ROSS and looked for this pirate for an hour, scanning every ships I could scan in supercruise, but I was not able to find him..... After a while I got bored, because a million payout check for a pirate that takes HOURS to find, is...... imbalanced? So anyways, I tried to interdict a few harmless NPC's, and I failed the interdiction every time. Don't know why they are so hard to interdict. Failed every time.. So I went to the NAV beacons to shoot down some wanted NPC's or someone with a bounty. Found an NPC with a bounty and I shot her down, and immediatly I got shot down too.. And I lost almost 5.000.000 (five million) credits in insurance cost on my Python.. I had played for THREE hours without being able to earn a single coin, but losing five million in an instant...

This is happening everytime I try to start playing Elite again.. And to be honest, this is what's keeping me from playing Elite all together, because I'm afraid to lose all of my money... How the heck am I supposed to play this game and feel like I'm actually gaining something? I don't want to be doing trading all the time.. I don't have the funds to die all the time... I'm not able to do bounty missions... And if I'm lucky enough to do the bounty mission, there is a risk for me to lose all of my millions in an instant.. So please, if you have ANY good and helpful advice for me, please share... I really want to be start playing again....

Try transport or passenger missions.

 

[rekurzion]

777: Saw your post about $50M in 15 and how you do it.

What the *(&()... I'm allied with all factions at my home station and have a trader rank of Tycoon. It is always in boom along with just about every system in a 20LY radius of where I am. Home station is a high tech station. I have never ever seen missions like shown on your screen - ever. You're the real deal.

I'm guessing I don't see those kind of high paying hauling missions is because I'm only Tycoon rated and where I am in the bubble. Now I just have to find a place that generates those things.

completing successful missions in a row for a given faction will also unlock higher paying missions. when i'm freshly allied the highest paying salvage mission i see may be 1 mil. after doing several of those in a row they jump up to 3. sure enough if i fail one they drop down below 1.

rank. reputation. faction state. successive completion. and location, location, location all play a role.

 

[Andovar]

Reverb cascades and penetrator payload are a traders best friend.

Can you elaborate on what you mean here?
What specific build would you use in a T9 to fight off a CMDR interdiction? (assuming you fail the interdiction... which i do. NPC's easy to escape, humans not so much)
I'm having a hard time imagining any trade focused build that's going to hold up to even a moderately engineered combat ship. Well, unless the that pilot really sucks.

777: Saw your post about $50M in 15 and how you do it.

What the *(&()... I'm allied with all factions at my home station and have a trader rank of Tycoon. It is always in boom along with just about every system in a 20LY radius of where I am. Home station is a high tech station. I have never ever seen missions like shown on your screen - ever. You're the real deal.

I'm guessing I don't see those kind of high paying hauling missions is because I'm only Tycoon rated and where I am in the bubble. Now I just have to find a place that generates those things.

As far as I'm aware, they're only ever in that one system, and always the same destination. I got lucky once and grabbed one. Though it was just 30-something mil, not the full 50.
Honestly, seems like an anomaly in the mission generator. But they're relatively rare to popup, so can't really be exploited.

 

[Faybs]

OP, if you're out of practice maybe you should stay away from combat until you've gotten some of the old muscle memory back... in the meantime, there are quite a few other things you can do. If you really do prefer combat, and you're short on cash, sell one of the more expensive modules of your python and buy yourself a viper - the rebuy is a lot less. When you're back to kicking butt you can sell the viper and get back into the python.