Making "money" in-game?

[Arcanum]

If I want to make "money" (that is, expand my resources so I can upgrade my ship) in the game, am I more-or-less obligated to do trading loops? Or is there some way of doing it other than that and grinding enemy ships that I've missed?

I'm at a point where I really need to grow beyond my Scout, but the resources to do so are hard to come by.

[Scrogdog]

Asteroids can be mined as well. You may also find resources on planetary missions or on derelict vessels. Trading can be quite profitable and your number of trade partners increases as you play.

You have a set of early gate coordinates that bring you to an asteroid field by now I would think. Way up North. If not, keep battling the drones; you'll get the coordinates somewhere in those systems.

[Arcanum]

Originally posted by Scrogdog:

Asteroids can be mined as well. You may also find resources on planetary missions or on derelict vessels. Trading can be quite profitable and your number of trade partners increases as you play.

You have a set of early gate coordinates that bring you to an asteroid field by now I would think. Way up North. If not, keep battling the drones; you'll get the coordinates somewhere in those systems.

Yep, I've got that. I was just wondering if I had missed something since it seemed like all the available options involved a significant grind. Thanks.

[Scrogdog]

Don't forget to use all of the available hexes in the ship yard for the scout class. One of the upgrades adds more hexes to work with. The boxes on the left in the ship yard will tell you various things about your build, including how many hexes your current design uses and how many remain.

[Army of Optimists]

It's not immediately apparent, but there are points where new enemy factions or ships are introduced and they drop significantly more materials. For instance, Titanium is extremely rare in the early game, but by mid-late ships will frequently drop 10+ of it per kill. You shouldn't need to grind much unless you want to overpower the enemies you're up against.

If you do find a system where you're seriously outgunned, it's more of a caution that you shouldn't be in that part of space yet.

[Thundercracker]

the catch to the above is that sometimes you'll want or need something you dont have a lot of, but you have mountains of something else.

like, for example, i just recently had something like 3k aluminum. i dont need that, but i eat titanium, and there's a bunch of stuff that's wanting some neutronium, which i have not been able to find in quanitity.

in this situation, there's a planet that gives good silver in exchange for aluminum. i then exchange the silver for the things i need form another trader, or try to find one that gives good prices on a different good i can take to a trader with even better prices, etc.

[Arcanum]

Thanks everybody.

So, the issue i had been having was that I had OK (but not huge) amounts of aluminum and titanium, but was coming up short on the rarer resources. Chiralite and Ethium (or whatever it's called) in particular.

I did some trading, which helped, but the big thing was getting enough turrets on my scout to start taking on the pirates. In addition to aluminum and titanium, they almost always drop gold, and regularly drop small amounts of rarer resources.

[Helios]

You dont make a profit but it helps having trade analytics tech to see how much you loose or gain selling stuff to traders.