Flipping ships

[Nightwolf]

so couple patches back flipping ships was fairly easy, slap back on all the removed doors, add in some bits like full hvac and you could double you money. admittedly it was a little broken so being fixed was always expected.

now however, im having a impossible time of it.

i had a ship that had a reactor room listed. i put back on all the doors, repaired everything. the reactor was only missing the cryo pump and laser thing. re-rated it. did not register the reactor anymore....does it need to be fully 100% to register now? a 1.4 mil ship i sold off with full hvac life support, etc for just 1 mil.......

had another ship that had 4 cargo bays. slapped back on all the doors, each bay had some crates and a bin or two. re-rated it. did not register the 4 rooms as cargo storage....sold that for a loss.

this is getting a little frustrating. the guides and post about ship flipping are largely out of date. there is zero in-game help.

is there any up-to-date info about flipping ships now or getting the game to register a room as cargo, reactor etc.

just stripping them is a bit annoying but at least its mildly profitable. im just about to turn to trading at this point.

[YZed]

It definitely not the quick and dirty strip and flip it use to be. Even the pricing is hard to make sense of.

The wiki page is being updated and there's info on rooms in there. Apparently putting some non relevant equipment can block a room from being categorised. Might be worth a look.

[tritton82]

Flipping can still be profitable, but you've got to pick the right ship. I don't tend to buy ships over $100,000 and can generally increase the price at least 100%. Here's a silly little thing I wrote on the discord (I am the dirtiest of flippers!)

Before Flipping[imgur.com]

An unsmiling presenter in a smart suit looks seriously at the camera "Hello, and Welcome Back to Ganymed Sharks."
Cut to a slick graphic of a shark crunching down on a spaceship, the words "Ganymed Sharks" slide across the screen.
Cut back to the presenter, they're standing in front of a run down airlock "Tonight's ayo-sode highlights one of the worst chop, flop, and drop ships we've ever seen on the market. A tragic example of what a spacer, no doubt here illegitimately, will do to turn a fast buck.

This ship was impounded by Ayosec only weeks ago, however not before it was sold on to the OGISO broker. They've kindly allowed us to show this 'vehicle' in the hopes of stopping similar misdeeds." The presenter turns as the camera pans to the left, revealing an Ayosec officer, standing somewhat imperiously. "Officer Winters, if you could please take us through the depths of this ship, and tell us about the state you found it in."

The Officer focuses on the camera uncomfortably.
"Of course, as you can see from this early Ayosec scan this ship was originally a heavily damaged Testudo Dream cargo variant, with very little of the original body left. It was purchased at the OGISO broker for approximately $63,000."
"$63,000, not a bad price for something in this state."
"Exactly, the purchaser removed some of the remaining walls, you can see here. " The officer pokes their finger into a wall behind them, it smoothly goes through the thin plastic patch wall "Some of the walls were simply patched, a temporary solution turned permanent."
"Terrible, but the ship is pilotable?"
"Not at all I'm afraid, if you'd step through with me here."

The presenter and officer step into a dingy room followed by the camera, the single light illuminating the room flickers behind them.
"Oh my."
"Exactly, the purchaser threw any old hull piece at this poor thing, one thruster, a Kang and a Hydra intake."
"A Hydra intake, but those are quite rare?"
"Yes, they knew that the allure of the Hydra would interest many. Allowing them to sell at a high price, even if the rest of the ship was." The officer gestures around the room, his gaze falls upon the single O2 pump, wheezing asthmatically in the corner.
"And there's two transponders as well?"
"A common ploy, a transponder increases a ship's worth dramatically. What they've done here is install a transponder registered to the ship, and one which has been acquired elsewhere. In criminal circles this practice is known as Doppelganging. Unfortunately it is impossible for the subsequent owner to know this prior to purchase due to the presence of the 'correct' transponder."
"It's terrible."
"It's criminal, the ship in this state was sold back to the OGISO broker for around $530,000. The purchasers whereabouts are still unknown."

After Flipping[imgur.com]

[Bystandard]

havent tried it but isnt this what the ferry and tow service is for. Fly out -enable- a ship fly back and have it towed then sell. IDK

[-]

Tritton82 - That was AWESOME! That needs to go somewhere in the game somehow.

[Shenji]

Rooms are not important as before. Only fusion reactor worth your time, install one reactor without attachments(just field coils and reactor core) will increase ship price for 500k-600k, makes 200k-300k profit(as a Kleg illegal). And you can just sell it in the real estate kiosk without rating it. Sometimes rate-a-ship might just mess the whole thing and reduce the price so just install/fix the reactor then sell it asap.

[YZed]

Originally posted by Shenji:

Rooms are not important as before. Only fusion reactor worth your time, install one reactor without attachments(just field coils and reactor core) will increase ship price for 500k-600k, makes 200k-300k profit(as a Kleg illegal). And you can just sell it in the real estate kiosk without rating it. Sometimes rate-a-ship might just mess the whole thing and reduce the price so just install/fix the reactor then sell it asap.

Rooms multiply the value of the items in them. If you have salvaged a bunk, you get more putting it in luxury quarters than selling. I even spent 7k at the sundries kiosk, installed it and added 15-20k to the ship value. Total profit from the ship was 1.2m without restoring the hull betond making it hold air.

Its worth it money wise, up to the player to decide if it's worth it time wise.

[Shenji]

It's not the best time efficiency way like fixing reactor, but yes, to each his own.

[Neutromancer]

I hope this is helpful, as I'm trying to figure out the profitability ships myself.
I've managed to build a decent salvage ship with good space and a reactor, and was doing some profits, but it was really slow. Like, maybe 200k after a bunch of salvaging reactor pieces and selling at black market. So I decided, maybe time to try the ship flip thing.

I accumulated the pieces to a reactor (just enough to make it "functional", like maybe a 2nd pellet and laser but probably not needed, once I had enough stuff I went and bought a used Racing "Whistler" for about 200k (only paid half, the rest was mortgage). Since ship is fully functional (no life support tho), I just docked it to a random Halberd I had already stripped for parts, to use the floors and walls to make a 17 x 11 reactor room, plus walls.

I put it all together, and now the ship is rated at slightly over $1,000,000, so way more than the sum of the reactor parts, I think. And I haven't even fixed the Core and cryo pump yet, it has no reactor fuel tanks at all.

Going by full price of the parts, they are maybe worth 100k in a good day (the "real" price is around 112k but we know the license kiosk pays about half, and the black market fluctuates between 50% and less than 100%). Plus time, mostly just building the hull.

Buying a big freighter is a bit of a trap tho, a derelict could be worth 1 to 2 million, and even adding a reactor and sealing them you might earn 50k or even lose money. Always start with something cheap and/or small and add a reactor yourself - if you can find a full freighter derelict under 100k that's a jackpot.

EDIT: I think the issue is that, when you buy a derelict, you and/or the Broker doesn't know what's in it. So they assume they have a complete reactor room depending on the model, rather than the actual pieces. If you test this by savescumming and then visiting the ship, the parts get generated upon docking and not when the ship spawns, so you sometimes might get a reactor and sometimes you don't, on the same ship...

EDIT 2: After fixing the core, pump and adding a couple missing parts (core pump, last pellet thingy) and reinstalled most of the thrusters I removed to make room, I ended up with a final price of $1,245,689.