Like everyone else, I started off in a Sidewinder with a bunch of loaner parts and 1,000 Cr.
And I wanted a more capable ship. So I spent my early hours scavenging planet surfaces, until I could finally afford something more suited to what I wanted to do, and bought an Adder.
Though I quickly figured out it would need a good bit of updating and upgrading to make it a decent ship.. so back to the surfaces I went, scavenging more.
And after a good bit of scavenging, I was able to get some decent upgrades, but still wanted more and better upgrades, so I took to mission running - freight and data mostly, but it was more money faster than scavenging.
But I certainly didn't feel like an upgrade to a C-class FSD, opting to pass on upgrading my puny weapons or distributor because I'd need to fly 6 more data runs to afford one of these... it felt like "work".
Not a "grind" - I was certainly having fun doing "things", I just wanted to do more things, more interesting things, and most importantly, survive encounters with NPC's without 3/4 of my profits going into repairs every trip.
I got there.
I also remember the first time I bought a brand new ship, outfitted it right there with A-grade pretty much everything, weapons the way I wanted them, and even stuck a decal on it. It felt good - it felt like I had accomplished something - I'd crawled out from under the oppressive dark matter of abject poverty and clawed my way into Hopeless Middle-classdom.
Of course, it wasn't much of a ship - I bought myself a Viper IV, loaded it, and set off to learn the trade of a bounty hunter. And I used that ship for a very long time, until I was able to repeat the previous - buy and rig a ship right off the bat - this time, a Keelback, that long served me as my primary freight hauler. And the experience was no less diminished, in fact, it formed the foundation for a practice I still maintain:
If I can't afford to buy it, outfit it, and cover the insurance, I don't buy it.
Of course, making money isn't all that hard to do - just do "stuff" - you can get paid for doing nearly anything.
I've been playing for a year and a half and I'm constantly asking myself where all of these wealthy people are getting their credits. I realize there's a sizeable population in-game which got to the top brackets by way of exploits and META-seeking behavior. Can't fault them for outsmarting the game. But because so many have taken advantage of these situations when they pop up, the overall balance is affected--which FD rightfully step in to fix, but those of us in the bottom and middle brackets are disproportionately affected.
It's like being told "Anyone can kick a field goal," but the people saying it got to kick their goals when it was 20 yards away and the rest of us are having to kick from 50, 60, 70, and so on, never actually able to reach the goal because FD are constantly moving the goalposts.
Edit: So, my TLDR version would be that it's not easy to make money in ED. It's becoming progressively more difficult if you're not already in a position to offset the balance changes to payouts.
No, they're not moving the goalposts - the price of ships and modules has not changed significantly (or at all as far as I know).
it took 7 months daily play to get into a Python.
