The history of money making in Elite Dangerous

babelfisch

babelfisch
No, I am not a Nigerian prince.

Anyone interested in creating a timeline for the various forms of money making in Elite, most rewarding professions, exploits, etc? Since I've never been good at making money I probably get it all wrong, so it would be great if you could help me out (and ideally share a few intersting anectodes).

I remember that rares were pretty good in the early days, bounty hunting got a serious buff and used to be one of the most profitable professions. Normal trading was in a good place for the first two years maybe? At some point everyone used to haul Biowaste from Robigo or Sothis. Was there something about stacking Skimmer missions? From end of 2018 until present the most profitable profession is probably mining. Does anyone remember the exact dates or other activities?
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
For me the big money makers in the Summer of last year were passenger runs (Smeaton, Rhea etc) and later in Autumn it moved to the high value goods wing supply missions. I did do a few Skimmer mission stacks, probably around May last year (I think).

Earlier than that I was probably working out which end of a multicannon to point at an NPC.
 

Speedcuffs

Speedcuffs
Deejayeff145 said:
For me the big money makers in the Summer of last year were passenger runs (Smeaton, Rhea etc) and later in Autumn it moved to the high value goods wing supply missions. I did do a few Skimmer mission stacks, probably around May last year (I think).

Earlier than that I was probably working out which end of a multicannon to point at an NPC.
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Smeaton, oof.
Could've done with S/C assist for dat! :LOL:
 

PavelKCZ

PavelKCZ
Hmm, I remember times when CGs was a nice profit making machine, if someone was in top 10% or something like this. Once I won something like 100.000.000. And it was in times when 100.000.000 was A LOT of credits. :)

It was at 2014 or 2015 ? I do not remember exactly.
 

babelfisch

babelfisch
dognosh said:
This was intended and not an exploit.
When rare goods were introduced(late Beta?) there was either no limits on amount, or a generous one(can't remember). We all had a go, and we posted here advising the routes to take etc....
After a few weeks I had 150M Cr and I thought WOW ! :D
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There was also something about the range mechanism, don't remember what they changed though... :D
 

Phil JMac

P
(stuff before my time)

Robigo Slave runs

Ceos poo running

Qunice bordom scanning

Qunice passenger mission

massacre missions (I think)

skimmers

50m fetch missions

Long distance passenger missions

Void opels

????


I'm probably wrong with this, I did some poo running back in the day


edit - and lots of fetch missions but I've always been a trader
 

Ambroza

Ambroza
Dommarraa said:
The first exploit I remember was the "Seeking Goods" traders. Stoopid trade profits from a 15ls trip, but still nothing compared to VOpals
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Ah yeah, the performance enhancers Seeking Goods POIs. I remember you could make about 7 million an hour with those, which at the time, was vastly superior to anything else. Things sure have changed quite a bit.
 

Goose4291

Banned
Goose4291
Navigare Necesse Est said:
There was smuggling missions to remoter stations in bubble. Most only know Robigo I guess. They were fun. They earned good money. It was actually gameplay. Then they killed it.
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The best thing about those was at the time I was staunchly imperial, and scanning ships to ensure they were carrying the correct slave type at Robigo. Felt like I was doing something good for the empire.

The fact the player carrying them then failed the mission was an added bonus.
 

d8veh

d8veh
babelfisch said:
No, I am not a Nigerian prince.

Anyone interested in creating a timeline for the various forms of money making in Elite, most rewarding professions, exploits, etc? Since I've never been good at making money I probably get it all wrong, so it would be great if you could help me out (and ideally share a few intersting anectodes).

I remember that rares were pretty good in the early days, bounty hunting got a serious buff and used to be one of the most profitable professions. Normal trading was in a good place for the first two years maybe? At some point everyone used to haul Biowaste from Robigo or Sothis. Was there something about stacking Skimmer missions? From end of 2018 until present the most profitable profession is probably mining. Does anyone remember the exact dates or other activities?
Click to expand...
You don't need a timeline. what you need is a mining ship with as much cargo spaces as possible and a detailed surface scanner. Fly it down to Hyades Sector DB-X d1-112 2 and start mining in the double Painite hotspot.

Use this to figure out where to sell it. Before long, you should be making around 200mil an hour, which is the highest legitimate earnings rate there has been in the game.
http://edtools.ddns.net/miner
 

d8veh

d8veh
I think the first exploit was taking an all-turreted Anaconda into a Conflict zone and leaving it there overnight farming combat bonds while you slept.
Another good one was something in Robigo, where you stacked a load of missions to carry something, which they gave you, then sold whatever it was in the Robiigo black market.

I think the best gold rush of all was the Robigo long-range smuggling missions because you needed skill and cunning to outwit the hoards of NPCs that were trying to interdict you all the time. They got you around 40 mil per hour, which I still think is about the right maximum pay rate you should get, and there was appropriate risk in getting it. I just don't understand the logic in dishing out 200 mil per hour for no-risk mining.
 

marx

marx
I think the very first unintended credit bug was the discovery bonus of Sagittarius A*, as it was only done once, by Zulu Romeo.
You see, back in gamma, the supermassive black hole didn't have its own kind of credit payout, but used the same calculation as regular black holes did. Now, since payout scales primarily with mass, the payout he cashed was massive too. Not sure about the exact amount, but it was enough to catapult him to become the first Elite in exploration, so it was at least 150 million Cr. (This was back when Elite in exploration was a much longer affair, not the short one it is today.)

Frontier patched this out quickly, but they let him keep the credits and the rank. I assume they thought it fitting that he would be the first to reach exploration Elite this way.


As for the first money making bug that was widely used before it was fixed, yeah, I think those were the "Seeking goods" signal sources. They would have a trader ship in them, which would magically transfer specific cargo from your hold and pay high credits for them. These could spawn close to stations, and it was entirely possible that they would be buying cargo that that station sold. So, you'd dock, buy low, launch, fly in SC for a few seconds, and sell high.
 

CMDR Karrde Sun

CMDR Karrde Sun
You missed slaves before biowaste. Critically the experience was completely different with swarms of npc's (that were crashing the server or something) and fail on scan. Best experience in gaming while you were still being taught the failure conditions. Hasn't been matched since....

If you want a point of discussion about it, most of those mechanisms involved stacking missions, and frontier passive aggressively, then practically turned that off.
 
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