How does one actually make money nowadays?

[DarthArcanus]

Noldunar, your post was long, so I didn't want to quote it, but well said. Very excellent points on how to survive and profit in a RES without a super ship.

To Cowski, on how to make money, I trailed system authority ships in my sidewinder, only engaging targets they fired upon, until I was able to afford to purchase a cobra, which I think cost me 2-3 million, and then I rare traded my way into a Type-6. That allowed me to bulk trade my way into really any ship I wanted. I went with an Asp E and started some exploration, and eventually earned my way into a Python, but a Vulture is way back at the Asp E level.

 

[Sergio Smegolia]

Okay....annnnnd how do you get all that money to buy a Vulture? It's not like they are cheap. Nor is the gear to equip it.

That's what I don't understand. Those that have hundreds of millions of credits, automatically assume, EVERYONE does! We don't. We're chugging along making a meager living (I'm only at 4.2million atm) but some are even less than that.

It's not nice to assume.

All I know is once I figure this game out, I'm going to do all I can to help those that are having difficulty make their millions because I've been where they are at.

Have you tried rare trading? Don't know what the state of it is currently but in a cobra you could find some nice routes which could get the ball rolling for you. Plus it's more interesting than A-B trading.

Smeg

 

[Broadsword1986]

Okay....annnnnd how do you get all that money to buy a Vulture? It's not like they are cheap. Nor is the gear to equip it.

That's what I don't understand. Those that have hundreds of millions of credits, automatically assume, EVERYONE does! We don't. We're chugging along making a meager living (I'm only at 4.2million atm) but some are even less than that.

It's not nice to assume.

All I know is once I figure this game out, I'm going to do all I can to help those that are having difficulty make their millions because I've been where they are at.

I made 17 mil credits in 2 hours flying my cobra mk 3 yesterday decked out with economy class passenger cabins. And that's in an area where I'm not even allied with the factions. When I got bored of that, I went bounty hunting with an eagle mk II finishing the evening with 20 mil earned. Getting credits in ED is easy as a breeze.

 

[veryinky]

Passenger missions are a complete gold-mine ....

Maybe 10-15m of that is from RES at the very most.... i've done little RES .... Passenger missions are great for time vs reward for me

Only 'bug' i encountered so far was a mission that got marked fail without really showing me why... i certainly didn't think i warranted that...

Rather curious as to what kinds of passenger missions you're getting and where.

I've seen 10 million to haul a "Famous Artist" to 2 tourism beacons, but it turned out he was wanted and I had my ship shot out from under me while leaving the station about 1 minute after accepting the mission. That soured me on the whole concept.

 

[Broadsword1986]

Rather curious as to what kinds of passenger missions you're getting and where.

I've seen 10 million to haul a "Famous Artist" to 2 tourism beacons, but it turned out he was wanted and I had my ship shot out from under me while leaving the station about 1 minute after accepting the mission. That soured me on the whole concept.

The lesson to be gleaned from this experience is to read the entire mission description, not just the part about the amount of credits you'll get and the distances you need to cover.

 

[Ziljan]

I made 17 mil credits in 2 hours flying my cobra mk 3 yesterday decked out with economy class passenger cabins. And that's in an area where I'm not even allied with the factions. When I got bored of that, I went bounty hunting with an eagle mk II finishing the evening with 20 mil earned. Getting credits in ED is easy as a breeze.

Yup, running criminal tourists around the galaxy is pretty darn lucrative, and is a good balance of risk vs reward.

At first I was a little concerned that carrying these guys around gave me a wanted status, but after I realized that I just needed to use a Cobra then it was all pretty easy and quite fun!

 

[veryinky]

The lesson to be gleaned from this experience is to read the entire mission description, not just the part about the amount of credits you'll get and the distances you need to cover.

Hi. You appear to be confused.

Let me repeat this for you:
FAMOUS. ARTIST.

There was no mention of him being wanted. There was no mention of him not liking being scanned.

To re-iterate: This was not a criminal mastermind. This was not an escaped convict. This wasn't even a Famous Explorer or Celebrity which have the "does not like being scanned" tag.

There was no indication whatsoever anywhere within the description that "scanned=ship destruction". Especially from the station I just launched from.

I would highly recommend that you read someone's post before you go vomit your smug self importance all over the place.

Found one, Celebrity this time. On leaving the station with this passenger, received a 1505cr bounty.

Though I think the most insulting version of this bug was 9 economy class regular nameless tourists who wanted to be carried to the next system over. They were wanted and I got a bounty while arriving to that station. No, there was no mention of scans in their mission description. But at least in that case it wasn't the station the mission came from that attacked.

 

[Cowski]

I can comment on the combat and bounty hunting part, because this is what I like to do and find fun. So, first things first, even though I have a Vulture and a FdL I rarely ever use them. For some weird reason I love fighting in a Viper III (which is about 3 million to A-rate and has a low rebuy), Cobra III (in a heavy hull tank variant) or Diamondback Scout. All those ships are relatively cheap to outfit and have a low rebuy, yet, they are very effective with a little practice. After the AI upgrade I of course had to relearn combat as well, but it is not that hard to do. Yesterday I made two million flying an A-rated but mostly unmodded Viper III (only had grade 1 clean drive tuning) solo in a HazRES.

So here are my general combat PVE combat tips:

1. To increase your profits fit a KWS and scan every target before attacking. This also helps to improve your rep with the local minor factions since you can hand in their bounties.

2. To increase profits further, go hunting in an Arissa L-D control or exploited system. Even if not pledged to her bounty payouts are increased by 20%.

3. Use the right tools for the job. A cheap fighter with good hardpoint placement and a small hitbox as well as good thrusters and acceleration. I like the Viper III (great acceleration and thrusters), the Diamondback Scout (great pitch rate, good hardpoint placement) or the Cobra III (fast but weak shields and sub-par hardpoint placement). If you have access to it, the iCourier is also great.

4. Never engage wings.

5. Always check the enemies loadout (in sub-targets panel) before engaging. I have made it a personal rule to stay away from enemies with rail guns.

6. Keep your throttle in the blue zone at 50% and use forward and reverse thrusters to shortly increase or decrease speed depending on your needs. If in a good firing position use your reverse thruster to stay there and not overshoot. If in a joust, increase speed to quickly close the gap.

7. Use your right and left thrusters a lot in combination with up and down thrusters to get out of the way of slower projectiles like cannon shells and plasma or dumb fire missiles. This is why you check the loadout, to see what can expect.

8. Use yaw while pitching to quickly get a target back in your sights if they are off sideways.

9. Use the target hologram: If the target is facing you: 4 pips shields, forward thruster, quickly close the gap. If the target shows it's thrusters to you, pips to engines and weapons, forward thruster to stay close, fire. If you are 90 degrees perpendicular: Up and down thrusters to match the targets motion and keep that position.

10. Capitalize on opportunities: Follow dangerous high value targets and only engage them after they engaged someone else or engage them after a fight they had when they are still weakened (shields gone or low, hull damage etc.)

11. You can boost in combination with thrusters: If you hold down your thruster button/key and boost while thrusting the boost energy is diverted to thrusters as well, allowing for a quick dodge or swing out of the way if in a head to head joust against.

12. Never carry cargo or engineer commodities yourself.

This is my hunting Viper:

https://coriolis.io/outfit/viper/2p...n58B42o25.Iw1+kA==.CwBj4yGYSA==?bn=res hunter

The only mods I have are grade 1 clean drive tuning, grade 1 FSD increase and grade 1 overcharged Power Plant.

Now THIS is the kind of info that comes in handy!!! You took the time to help us all out, give us input and tactical information. +Rep!! [up]

Those that give 1 line of "Do this and you'll make 50 gazillion credits!!", imo, don't have time to help people out and and here just to brag or put people down. Those that elaborate, take great pride in what they do & truly do want to help others.

Me thinks if you want to truly help out, go the extra mile & elaborate. If you don't want to help...don't even bother. It's a waste of your time and ours. That is unless your 1 line of help is truly descriptive. [yesnod]

 

[Cowski]

I made 17 mil credits in 2 hours flying my cobra mk 3 yesterday decked out with economy class passenger cabins. And that's in an area where I'm not even allied with the factions. When I got bored of that, I went bounty hunting with an eagle mk II finishing the evening with 20 mil earned. Getting credits in ED is easy as a breeze.

Meh...not 100% true. In fact not true at all!!!

I'm sure you didn't jump into the game and IMMEDIATELY get missions like those!! If you did, I'm sure we [and FD] would like to know what you did to bypass the faction/rep gain and go from 2,600cr missions to 20million credit missions.

Players like you don't bother mentioning, "Oh yeah...well...I had to grind for weeks to get missions and ships and gear like this." You make it appear you bought the game, installed it, jumped in, automatically got a Anaconda with all the bells & whistles, high rep and were immediately given 20million credit missions that are easy to run.

That's what es people off. Players that just ASSUME EVERYONE has high rep. We don't...despite our hard work & best efforts. :x[woah][where is it]

 

[Von Shadow]

Rather curious as to what kinds of passenger missions you're getting and where.

I've seen 10 million to haul a "Famous Artist" to 2 tourism beacons, but it turned out he was wanted and I had my ship shot out from under me while leaving the station about 1 minute after accepting the mission. That soured me on the whole concept.

In essence.... whatever .... i really don't care if they're wanted or not .... maybe 30% of my passengers have been wanted crims... no different than smuggling except hull damage generally == mission fail
I'm parked in Jameson Memorial (allied with all factions) and cherry picking the 2-3m for 20Ly ones .... occasionally doing the multi-hop tourist ones if one for 8-10m pops up (they take about 30-40m)

I'm not choosy ... i just check which criteria i have to watch (scanning/wanted/deadlines/fussy etc) and act accordingly.

 

[Wolfox]

Meh...not 100% true. In fact not true at all!!!

I'm sure you didn't jump into the game and IMMEDIATELY get missions like those!! If you did, I'm sure we [and FD] would like to know what you did to bypass the faction/rep gain and go from 2,600cr missions to 20million credit missions.

Players like you don't bother mentioning, "Oh yeah...well...I had to grind for weeks to get missions and ships and gear like this." You make it appear you bought the game, installed it, jumped in, automatically got a Anaconda with all the bells & whistles, high rep and were immediately given 20million credit missions that are easy to run.

That's what es people off. Players that just ASSUME EVERYONE has high rep. We don't...despite our hard work & best efforts. :x[woah][where is it]

I think the amount of CR blinded their mind, they don't remember the sidewinder periods.
Also the research of CR make you do mistakes, like the first time i got a Cobra, no enough money for insurance, and crashed against a starport because i was not used to the manoeuvrability.

I just took this route; build up a good reputation , understand this F..k..g Powerplay and community goals and go Bounty hunting in Solo mode, because also Solo Mode helps in earning money. But keep in mind the path, because in case of Reset you have to repeat it like everybody does.

PS: BUY A SHIP WHEN YOU HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY TWO OF THEM!

 

[Grumpy jawa]

Atm its a tad too realistic, in that you need money to make money and more you already have easier it becomes.

Folk will post on any low rank question "it's easy just use X" ofc X = bloody massive 100mil + ship, that no new pilot actually has, along with massive amounts of rep, that unsurprisingly new pilots also fail to have.

Example, loads of "just started mining" threads are full of advise like "durp durp, get a python" so bloody useless to am new player.

Fact is no rep, just starting out currently equals.... May as well just wait for missions to 're rescaled. No pay or very little just leaves new players stuck in a sidewinder with a thumb up      unable to really get started.


Ok they could go explore, but with a basic scanner they arnt getting sod all data rot sell.

So glad I came back few weeks before this patch and actually got a few creds and can actually get involved..

 

[Cupcake]

Let me run down the usual list here..

Missions: Broken and worthless, even with allied status. 200Kcr for assassinations with authority involvement, and even less for 100LY+ cargo runs. Acknowledged as broken last week, still waiting for a fix. Not expecting much.

Passengers: Broken and worthless, even with allied status. Oh sure, here's a run that pays 30mcr.. but it's TWENTY THOUSAND LY away. I don't even want to think about mindlessly thwacking the jump button for that length of time (that's about a thousand jumps at 20LY/jump).

Let alone getting back to civilization afterwards! The others pay about as little as standard missions.. ~50Kcr for a jump or two away, ~200kcr for about 100LY, roughly double if they're wanted (ooh! Let's see if we can get out of the station without being scanned!)

Better yet, they can't be stacked, since my 12 seat passenger cabin is rendered useless by a single person. Wonderful.

Mining: Not broken or worthless, but boring as sin. Somehow even moreso than jumping 1,000 times, (at least the 20KLY carries a risk of interdiction to break up the monotony) and requires a dedicated fit. (Prospecting/collecting limpets, mining laser, refinery). Pay is weak, and very RNG heavy.

Bounty hunting at Navs: Fun, but doesn't pay well. About 20-30K (after kws) for a single Master ranked NPC.

Bounty hunting at RES'es: I need to try this again - haven't been cop-tailing in RESes since I got exploded by a cop and his buddies after a chaff on the guy I was chasing made a stray multicannon round glance off his shields. How is it now?

Yeah, this is a thinly disguised rant thread. I'm rather hacked off that what was one of my favorite games has placed a brick wall in the progression path that seems to require no life to surmount. Do people actually find jumping 1,000 times for a single mission to be fun and enjoyable? I don't. Is this FD's way of saying I should f off and find something else to play?

What am I missing here?

---
Yknow, as I look through these numbers I just listed off, it looks like the payoffs for a lot of these need to increase by about 10x. Tack on an extra zero at the end.

• 30K bounty for a single master NPC? 300k seems more reasonable.
• 1,000 jumps should be paying 400 million, not 40.
• 2M for an assassination that could likely get me killed and definitely will make me wanted, not 200K.

Again, I'm looking at this from the standpoint of "I have a ship that costs 3 million to rebuy". With current credits, I can stand to lose that ship precisely once. I have to do 15 of the same kind of mission just to afford the ability to do something that's a lot more dangerous. And that's before we get into necessary upgrades. At the high end, acquiring and fitting an Anaconda to A takes about 500Mcr.

Hell, let's pretend I have an anaconda for a minute. 20 million+ rebuy? At these rates? That's not even fun anymore.

You are NOT missing anything. FD have stated several times they do things to discourage the "casual gamer", like the Beta system for example. Why should the game be different? Either its a massive faux pas on FD's part OR they are putting all their eggs in the whale basket

 

[Cowski]

I think the amount of CR blinded their mind, they don't remember the sidewinder periods.

That explains it the best right there.

Also the research of CR make you do mistakes, like the first time i got a Cobra, no enough money for insurance, and crashed against a starport because i was not used to the manoeuvrability.

I just took this route; build up a good reputation , understand this F..k..g Powerplay and community goals and go Bounty hunting in Solo mode, because also Solo Mode helps in earning money. But keep in mind the path, because in case of Reset you have to repeat it like everybody does.

Live 'n learn! [hotas]

PS: BUY A SHIP WHEN YOU HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY TWO OF THEM!

I need to make that a sticky note & put it on the bottom of my monitor! Words to live by!

 

[john_obrien]

Are there any tricks to finding stations that have decent passenger runs? Economywise or some other indicators?

Has anyone found any tricks finding stations with good passenger runs? I ask because I am not allied with many stations, and if I am going to work to becoming allied to a station, it would helpful to know if a high population or a high tech or some other indicator is available that would let me know which station it would be best to focus on becoming allied with to get access to high paying passenger missions.

 

[Kaa Mchorror]

Meh...not 100% true. In fact not true at all!!!

I'm sure you didn't jump into the game and IMMEDIATELY get missions like those!! If you did, I'm sure we [and FD] would like to know what you did to bypass the faction/rep gain and go from 2,600cr missions to 20million credit missions.

Players like you don't bother mentioning, "Oh yeah...well...I had to grind for weeks to get missions and ships and gear like this." You make it appear you bought the game, installed it, jumped in, automatically got a Anaconda with all the bells & whistles, high rep and were immediately given 20million credit missions that are easy to run.

That's what es people off. Players that just ASSUME EVERYONE has high rep. We don't...despite our hard work & best efforts. :x[woah][where is it]

How is it anyone else's fault that you flit around the bubble like a transient instead of putting down roots. It doesn't take that long to gain rank with a minor power. You don't need a Anaconda to run missions, in fact other smaller ships do missions better.

That's what makes me angry. Players that just assume that since I have it they deserve it but don't want to put any work in.

 

[Cowski]

How is it anyone else's fault that you flit around the bubble like a transient instead of putting down roots. It doesn't take that long to gain rank with a minor power. You don't need a Anaconda to run missions, in fact other smaller ships do missions better.

That's what makes me angry. Players that just assume that since I have it they deserve it but don't want to put any work in.

Heh...you are wrong, good sir! I have put down roots. Been there for 3 days now running missions. Ran 15 ones out of SOL last night and 13 the night before and will do even more tonight.

I AM doing the work. I don't expect to log in & get things handed to me!! I've been playing video games since my VIC-20 circa 1983. Look it up to see what that thing looks like!! I played beta WoW and played that off 'n on since it's release in 2004. I played beta CoH and played that off 'n on till its demise. I do the work despite what you think. I know the drill.

I'm asking that other players not assume EVERYONE has high rep. We don't. We are asking for guidance, nothing more. I didn't get on here asking for handouts. None of us did. You are angry for the wrong reasons.