Barring an unusual CG like this weekend, the go-to method of earning lots of credits is Sothis and since long distance trading might not be everyone's cup of tea, I have found two well paying alternatives.
Piracy (low temperature diamonds):
First, find yourself a nice inhabited pristine system with low security.
I use http://edtools.ddns.net/ for this.
Once there go and find the mining sites and stay in SC. Wait for trade ships to arrive in SC near the mining sites (not the star). Check the ship components, the ones you are looking for carry mining lasers.
Interdict the target and after scanning (every miner in pristine systems carries loads of LT diamonds) fire a single shot at it.
This will make the npc chase you and you can lure him away from the drop-out point.
After you have distanced yourself at least 8 km from where you dropped out from SC (have to go by feel, I usually let them chase me for at least a minute, boosting like mad).
Now take down the targets power plant to render it immobile. Keep shooting the hull (not the power plant after it is down to 0, otherwise the ship will explode) until it is below 30%.
Target the cargo hatch and fire at it with a low damage weapon, once the hatch goes below 80%, keep shooting in short bursts to have it malfunction and spill some cargo.
If you position you ship well, 3 cargo drones should suffice to scoop up the loot in a timely fashion.
Now, since you were smart and picked a low sec system, you will have 8 minutes until the cops arrive from the moment of your first shot.
Since you also led the target a few clicks away, once the cops get there (you will notice a message in the chat), they should be far enough away to not have you on their scanners.
However I swear they see me using my class I beam laser firing at the cargo hatch, so as soon as they show up, I switch to hatch breaker limpets, this should give you enough time to collect even more of those sweet LTDs.
Hatch breakers take a certain amount of time depending on the hull strength, that's why it is a good idea to keep shooting until the target is below 30% or so.
Eventually the cops will find you though, so keep an eye on that scanner.
I use a clipper with 128 cargo for this and can easily make between 5 and 7 million credits per hour, I expect 10 million might be doable as well.
Oh and look for a good system to sell, I believe I sell mine for 57k a piece.
Stacking combat zone missions
This one is a little gamey, since it involves instance switching to stack those missions. Be advised that there is a bug involved that will drive you mad, but Ill get to that in a second.
First, find yourself any system that is in a civil war or war. Since those missions will increase your rep and faction rank, you might as well pick fed/imperial systems if you need rank for the corvette/cutter.
Now try to get to friendly with the faction of you choice (that is at war)
I usually look for systems that have res sites and where the mission giving faction controls the station. Go to the res site, bag a few kills, turn them in at the faction controlled station and you will be at friendly in no time.
Now to the boring part: Log in all modes to stack the combat zone missions for your chosen minor faction. Join a few private groups in order to have more instances to find missions in.
I mostly went for the max of 20 missions. Some of them offered around 13 million to kill 108 ships. Beware that those missions have a timer of less than 5 hours.
Next head to any combat zone but do not immediately pick a side, boost away for a bit and only pick sides once you are not in the middle of the fight, otherwise you might get ganged up on.
Then look for a npc wingman - find a few friendlies, engage their target and then stay with those friendlies and keep helping them, pretty soon you will have quite a lot of them sticking together and going for the same targets.
And for the bug - currently ED likes to crash when multiple missions complete all at once, this is even more infuriating since I am usually in a good instance with lots of friendlies and the kills rolling in when this happens.
With a souped up python one session take me around 4-5 hours. 3 for stacking the missions (boring, but videos on the second screen help), and around 60 to 90 minutes to kill 108 targets (the most I have seen in a mission, only at high rank, low rank mission have lower expectations)
One of those runs nets me between 150 and 230 million, so not a bad hourly after all.
Jeebus, this turned out to be quite a lot of text, but I hope it will be helpful for some peeps looking to make a pretty penny with combat or piracy
Piracy (low temperature diamonds):
First, find yourself a nice inhabited pristine system with low security.
I use http://edtools.ddns.net/ for this.
Once there go and find the mining sites and stay in SC. Wait for trade ships to arrive in SC near the mining sites (not the star). Check the ship components, the ones you are looking for carry mining lasers.
Interdict the target and after scanning (every miner in pristine systems carries loads of LT diamonds) fire a single shot at it.
This will make the npc chase you and you can lure him away from the drop-out point.
After you have distanced yourself at least 8 km from where you dropped out from SC (have to go by feel, I usually let them chase me for at least a minute, boosting like mad).
Now take down the targets power plant to render it immobile. Keep shooting the hull (not the power plant after it is down to 0, otherwise the ship will explode) until it is below 30%.
Target the cargo hatch and fire at it with a low damage weapon, once the hatch goes below 80%, keep shooting in short bursts to have it malfunction and spill some cargo.
If you position you ship well, 3 cargo drones should suffice to scoop up the loot in a timely fashion.
Now, since you were smart and picked a low sec system, you will have 8 minutes until the cops arrive from the moment of your first shot.
Since you also led the target a few clicks away, once the cops get there (you will notice a message in the chat), they should be far enough away to not have you on their scanners.
However I swear they see me using my class I beam laser firing at the cargo hatch, so as soon as they show up, I switch to hatch breaker limpets, this should give you enough time to collect even more of those sweet LTDs.
Hatch breakers take a certain amount of time depending on the hull strength, that's why it is a good idea to keep shooting until the target is below 30% or so.
Eventually the cops will find you though, so keep an eye on that scanner.
I use a clipper with 128 cargo for this and can easily make between 5 and 7 million credits per hour, I expect 10 million might be doable as well.
Oh and look for a good system to sell, I believe I sell mine for 57k a piece.
Stacking combat zone missions
This one is a little gamey, since it involves instance switching to stack those missions. Be advised that there is a bug involved that will drive you mad, but Ill get to that in a second.
First, find yourself any system that is in a civil war or war. Since those missions will increase your rep and faction rank, you might as well pick fed/imperial systems if you need rank for the corvette/cutter.
Now try to get to friendly with the faction of you choice (that is at war)
I usually look for systems that have res sites and where the mission giving faction controls the station. Go to the res site, bag a few kills, turn them in at the faction controlled station and you will be at friendly in no time.
Now to the boring part: Log in all modes to stack the combat zone missions for your chosen minor faction. Join a few private groups in order to have more instances to find missions in.
I mostly went for the max of 20 missions. Some of them offered around 13 million to kill 108 ships. Beware that those missions have a timer of less than 5 hours.
Next head to any combat zone but do not immediately pick a side, boost away for a bit and only pick sides once you are not in the middle of the fight, otherwise you might get ganged up on.
Then look for a npc wingman - find a few friendlies, engage their target and then stay with those friendlies and keep helping them, pretty soon you will have quite a lot of them sticking together and going for the same targets.
And for the bug - currently ED likes to crash when multiple missions complete all at once, this is even more infuriating since I am usually in a good instance with lots of friendlies and the kills rolling in when this happens.
With a souped up python one session take me around 4-5 hours. 3 for stacking the missions (boring, but videos on the second screen help), and around 60 to 90 minutes to kill 108 targets (the most I have seen in a mission, only at high rank, low rank mission have lower expectations)
One of those runs nets me between 150 and 230 million, so not a bad hourly after all.
Jeebus, this turned out to be quite a lot of text, but I hope it will be helpful for some peeps looking to make a pretty penny with combat or piracy
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