After 750 hours of this game I'm out. I just can't see why I would waste one more minute of my life in this game. It's not fun to play. The whole game is rigged to prevent progression. I can't tell you how many times I've ended up in the ship of piety with millions of credits lost to rebuy my ship, and lost reputation that has to be rebuilt to get back to the good missions with ally status. I was making 3 to 4 million an hour doing surface scans but the crazy thing is, you get a reward for killing criminal skimmers, but a bounty for hacking the data port. Tell me that isn't stupid. And then, I was stacking the missions per system to make it more efficient but on the third planet 3 ships popped in to claim my big bounty of 30,000. Now admittedly, I was parked on the planet and went to get breakfast. They attacked while I was distracted.
I know this game is rigged to send you NPC attacks if you have a bounty or carry a load, but doesn't it seem that a large million dollar bounty should draw more attraction that few thousand from hacking data ports? Not that hacking a criminal dataport should incur a bounty at all, but still there should be some level of urgency attached to NPC responses.
Bottom line, this last trip to the ship of piety (and why do we have a ship of piety - that's dumb), and I'm set back to where I was a few days ago. I only get to play a few hours on any day and after getting 6 to 8 million on surface scans I lost it all in one encounter. Down 11 million to rebuy my ship. So it really is two steps forward and 3 steps back with this game some times.
I'll tell anyone reading this the only thing I know to collect credits in this game so you can progress. It's not by doing any of the advertised in system missions in the game. The only way in my 750 hours, that I've EVER made good money was in exploration. Going out in the lonely expanse where no one else is, not even NPC's, and doing planet scans. The most I've made that way was 130 million in one trip that took me about a week. That's credit progression, but a long BORING game play mode.
Good luck commanders. Until the developers quit being afraid of letting people make fun gaining credits in this game and until they realize that new content is the real way to keep gamers coming back then this game is doomed to be boring. I'd love to try out some of those other ships but unfortunately I spent so much time trying to figure out other ways to progress and regress that I realize now my only hope is to return to the road to riches. If I return to the game that is where I'll start. I'll fly the road till I get enough to properly outfit an Anaconda...i'm guessing 350 to 400 million. Never going to get there doing deliveries for 50k...just saying. The mission payouts in this game are a joke for everyone but noobs.
I'm sorry, but this is entirely a circumstance of your own creating. You made several mistakes you should not have and that should have been easily apparent and avoidable.
I've had 11 total rebuys the entire time I've played Elite, and I can chalk at least 2 of those up to bugs. It's not that hard to avoid death if you make the effort.
If you don't like the repurcussions of surface scan missions, don't do them! There's any number of things you could be doing instead to earn your credits: trading (including mining, rare trading, supplying systems in certain BGS states), passenger missions, and community goals. Choosing exploration, missions, and/or combat is some of the worst ways to earn credits.
And anybody who does that 'Road to Riches' malarkey is doing both exploration and money-making completely wrong.
If you know you're going to be AFK awhile, don't leave the game running! The main menu is one ESC push away. This is especially important when you're doing something risky like surface scan missions.
If you're doing something risky and you don't have the cash on hand to cover the costs of that risk, then you are making a poor decision. That's not the game taking 2 steps forward and 3 steps back, that's you.
None of this situation is the developer's fault. There are more credits to be made in Elite Dangerous right now than EVER (exploit nonsense aside). What you need is to educate yourself - because, granted, a lot of information about Elite is not self-contained within the game - and own up to the mistakes you have made.