Money making tips?

RyanBigDog · Jul 11, 2017

So I've made a decent amount of money so far, but compare to a lot of people I'm still game poor. I have plenty of experience in bounty hunting and exploring. Just made about 10 Mil in an hour doing Road to Riches.

However, these things get dull after a while and I need fast stacks to get better ships.

Anyone have any suggestions for fast money making?

Edit: I'm considering passenger missions right now and either buying a Dolphin or another Asp Explorer and outfitting that Asp with cabins. The Asp is the more expensive option and I only have 20 Mil to blow right now, so putting cabins and getting decent jump range would pretty much max me out. But passenger runs can lucrative. I see a mission right now that pays 1 Mil to go 77 Ly for sightseeing. The Asp can make that in 2 jumps. It'd be like a 20 minute run.

Any thoughts?

BRINGtheCANNOLI · Jul 11, 2017

Have you done any of the CGs (Community Goals) - so far it's been pretty easy to get into the top 25% for bounty hunting with a couple of hours of work, which can earn you quite a bit. I think I earned around 21mil on the first CG, and around 13mil on my second one, and then also started doing some of the trading CGs as well, but don't have a great ship for hauling, so just aimed for being in top 50% for another substantial infusion of cash.

There are definitely faster ways to get even more cash, related to guardian relics, but I'm purposely avoiding that, because I'm enjoying the slightly slower progression through buying ships. I'd rather not jump straight from cobra, asp to an anaconda in a week as I'd be worried about losing some of my enthusiasm for the game once I can afford everything that's for sale.

Apollo Jenkins · Jul 11, 2017

Buying a dolphin and starting passenger missions is a great way to make money. It's one of the fastest ships and and when you put an A grade FSD in it you can jump very far making passenger missions shorter. Also outfit it with a fuel scoop so you don't have to go to stations to fuel your tank

Be sure to choose a station and operate from there. Doing more missions for the same NPC's gives you better missions.

khaos526 · Jul 11, 2017

And while you're doing passenger missions, get a discovery scanner (best for advanced and honk every system at least to get even more bucks in the long run)...

Lngjohnsilver1 · Jul 12, 2017

Do the Guardians mission for Ram Tah - Go to Meene and it starts automatically.

Mr Fad · Jul 12, 2017

Apollo Jenkins said:
Buying a dolphin and starting passenger missions is a great way to make money. It's one of the fastest ships and and when you put an A grade FSD in it you can jump very far making passenger missions shorter. Also outfit it with a fuel scoop so you don't have to go to stations to fuel your tank

Be sure to choose a station and operate from there. Doing more missions for the same NPC's gives you better missions.

I'd Deffo recommend this! A rate the fsd and D rate everything else apart from a class 3A fuel scoop and advanced discovery scanner

I either use a mix of economy and business cabins with a 4 ton cargo rack (for mission rewards) or you can even go all out cargo and have 56 ton capacity including the scoop and scanner.

The asp is better but is much more expensive to buy and outfit, higher insurance, slower to dock/undock and scoop.

Suter1972 · Jul 12, 2017

Mr Fad said:
I'd Deffo recommend this! A rate the fsd and D rate everything else apart from a class 3A fuel scoop and advanced discovery scanner

I either use a mix of economy and business cabins with a 4 ton cargo rack (for mission rewards) or you can even go all out cargo and have 56 ton capacity including the scoop and scanner.

The asp is better but is much more expensive to buy and outfit, higher insurance, slower to dock/undock and scoop.

exactly this.....

I made 50mill within a couple of evenings. Its a grind but this seems the fastest route if you want to make money. I then blew it all on an Orca and ramped up the payouts so im now collecting cash even faster. Not quite sure where im heading now though so don't be in a rush to rush the race.

Blackjack14 · Jul 12, 2017

Doing exactly what you are considering. Started at launch day and made around 90M by now - no "cheating", just normal gameplay. Have tried everything. Combat, Bounty hunting, Community goal, Trading, Mining, Passengers.

From my experience, Community goal is a nice way to go if you run an APS Explorer at least and had access to some engineers. My multi cannons run +30% DPS and I fittet 6. Quite easy to steal some kills from the police. Made some 3M in current Community Goal which put me into top 50% for currently 6M extra after one week. But alltogether, if you calculate the jump time to collect the bounty from three different places every once and then, I spent about 10h or so for the 3M.

Then I saw some fantastic passenger runs and in my need to gain ranks in Federation (and Empire), I gave up on CG since they dont count for Federation ranks. Saw that some passenger missions have the very samer targets so I travelled some 400ly and bought 6 class cabins for Eco, Busi and First. Same for 5 class and 3 class. Went back and ordered everything over to be as flexible as possible. Went back. Donated some Missions (around 5M meanwhile) to get ranks. Made it close to 3rd ranks Feds and Empire by now - Gunship I smell you.

Having said that, my ASP is fittet 6 class first/business (you can place eco passengers anyways), a 5 class fuel scope (takes only 2 seconds per ton to scope so you dont waste time on the trip since this is exactly the time you need to fly around the suns to focus your next jump) and a 3A shield with 2 boosters and 2 point defenses. ALso fly 1A muilitary just to make sure a sidewinder cant hurt me out of orbit. Get interdicted rarely but still kick if somebody is looking for trouble. Due to my allied reputation I have never been scanned since days so even "illegal" passengers arent an issue but extra money.
Did three runs today with two missions each to 3 Targets. One trip took around 1h and the missions gave me 4+6M, 10+3M, 4+2M.
Compared with CG I made more than the bonus in just 1h. At the same time I keep scanning all planets for extra bucks.
By now I do CG only if I need a break from Hyperjumps. Looking forward to fights once I have my gunship powered-up.
But then again plan is to start intensive mining (370t needed) to unlock the armor engineer - again useful for trading and combat.

Not flying a Dolphin but stick with my ASP Ex since I am so flexible just with few refits. Stored all modules at the Base and whatever I am up for at login, a quick refit and off we go. Rebuy is just 1.8M and I have never lost my ship so far. After one Passenger trip, you can afford 5 rebuys, so who cares?

So far from my end, fly safe commander!

willowfan · Jul 12, 2017

Concur with those above.

Buy a Dolphin, print money.

Snowymonk · Jul 12, 2017

RyanBigDog said:
So I've made a decent amount of money so far, but compare to a lot of people I'm still game poor. I have plenty of experience in bounty hunting and exploring. Just made about 10 Mil in an hour doing Road to Riches.

However, these things get dull after a while and I need fast stacks to get better ships.

Anyone have any suggestions for fast money making?

Edit: I'm considering passenger missions right now and either buying a Dolphin or another Asp Explorer and outfitting that Asp with cabins. The Asp is the more expensive option and I only have 20 Mil to blow right now, so putting cabins and getting decent jump range would pretty much max me out. But passenger runs can lucrative. I see a mission right now that pays 1 Mil to go 77 Ly for sightseeing. The Asp can make that in 2 jumps. It'd be like a 20 minute run.

Any thoughts?

Elite Dangerous is not a race to the finish.
If you think of it as such, you may end up constantly chasing the illusive 'something'.

Enjoy the ride.
Do a little bit of everything until you find something that you enjoy.
If you find that you aren't enjoying something, or it is getting a bit boring, go and do something else.

Money is a means to an end and shouldn't be the driver for what you are doing. It should be a happy by-product.

pompeyfluff · Jul 12, 2017

Grab a Type 6, fit a business class cabin and 2x 32t cargo holds. Easy money with passengers and cargo at the same time.

100% agree with the ADS comments, made over 1m from data alone in one passenger run last night

Apollo Jenkins · Jul 13, 2017

Snowymonk said:
Elite Dangerous is not a race to the finish.
If you think of it as such, you may end up constantly chasing the illusive 'something'.

It's not a race to the finish but we have some catching up to do. PS4 is late to the party and I've read the word "Power" a lot in the ED advertising. Money equals power. Also in this universe. So if PS4 players want to make a dent in to this universe we need money fast. So we can dictate the future of ED [big grin]

heliman001 · Jul 13, 2017

Definitely passenger missions.
Don't just go for the cookie missions,check the board thoroughly and quite often you can find more than one mission going to the same destination.
Then you want to use EDDB or similar to check if there is anything worth trading en-route for more money.
As mentioned fit an advanced scanner for more money,and finally if you are comfortable with combat then stick a commodity of high value in your hold to guarantee an interdiction.
You will then have potentially 4 incomes from a single mission.

willowfan · Jul 13, 2017

*Don't do point 4 above if you are carrying nervous passengers that don't like danger*

Snowymonk · Jul 13, 2017

Apollo Jenkins said:
It's not a race to the finish but we have some catching up to do. PS4 is late to the party and I've read the word "Power" a lot in the ED advertising. Money equals power. Also in this universe. So if PS4 players want to make a dent in to this universe we need money fast. So we can dictate the future of ED [big grin]

Fair point, but power comes in a number of different ways.

If Elite is successful on PS4, we as a community have the potential to be much more powerful than the PC or Xbox group. Our number is Legion. (It probably wont happen, but I can wish). I was just counselling against rushing towards the big ships too soon and missing the detail on the way through.

I personally have seen people make a lot of money bounty hunting.

It wasn't for me so I went the trade route (Rare trading first, now bulk trading) - Up until the latest CG, when I got sidetracked to haulage into BlackMount Orbital, I was upgrading ships every second / third day. The latest CG rewards should see me able to buy a Type 7. I only play for three(ish) hours a night and was quickly racking up the credits.

I know of other people who have gone the Dolphin / Orca route. I have seen their posts of various sites that the passenger missions have taken them. I know they claim that it is a very lucrative money making venture.

Finally, I am also friends with some Commanders that have gone the Explorer route using a high powered fuel scoop and an advanced discovery scanner. Jump, Honk, Scoop, Jump. Not an obvious money making route, but when you eventually turn in all those scans it pays reasonably well.

Good luck with whatever you end up doing.