How to make money?

[Rabcor]

For the 1000th time i'm gonna ask this quesiton, i've googled all over and every method i find is either too slow, or has been patched to be slower (example: Stock Exchange making millions in a couple of minutes, can't do that anymore.)

So far i've had best luck with just doing combat missions, and killing pirates. (And yes, i actually found this gameplay most fun if i started off as a bankrupt assassin, it was total madness getting to a safe area to start farming money though, all those pirate galleons i had to dodge on the way!)

If i'm lucky and actually find missions i can get 100-200k for combat missions, but i did manage to get one that gave me 730k though, that was the highest one (but no different from the others) I've played for like 8 hours and even if i captured a falcon(which i decided to keep), and sold a few M5s i also got, i've only made about 2-3 mil. I see ships that cost over 100 million, and i know i just must be doing it wrong.

I also in another playthrough tried buying a merchant ship, but i musta been doing that wrong too because profits came really slowly even if i had a 10k cargo capacity, even if it was usually piece of cake to find a place where i could buy stuff cheap, it was always much harder to sell for a decent profit. Maybe i was just buying the wrong wares? (Ore and Energy)

I've tried to do different types of missions too, i figured that early on asteroid scans are usually a great deal.

How can i make enough money to buy those oversized ships?

[AMJ]

When Stock Exchange is excluded there is no real easy and fast method to make millions.

But a good method is by trading through Universal Traders or Station(komplexes)
Your 2-3 millions are enough to start with one of these ways.

[mmmcheesywaffles]

Salvage!

Even a lowly M3 is worth a few million. Expecially when you barter any salvaged missiles.
Just fly through the War Sectors and claim any ships left without pilots then keep them safe while they slowly fly to the Shipyards. While escorting them keep your eyes open for more missiles. They can be sold at any station through Barter and a good deal can earn you 50k for just one missile [with a bit of bartering]

[CTHOMP]

Watch CDRDave tutorial videos on youtube... you'll learn a lot about the game basic which will be helpful.

Also, get a freight scanner on a fast ship and do freight scan missions for pirates. You can make a ton of money that way.

As your race relations go up the amount of profittssss you can earn goes up big as well. I had some asteroid scan missions where I could make multi millions fairly quick and easily. And Station build missions are also super easy to do once you get a Mammoth with a jump drive and can bring in big $$$.

[ironwolf13]

I have found out that the most lucrative sub-missions are taxi services....I have a Phantom TP that I bought in Legend's Home at the Argon Shipyard....It's top speed is 180, and very fast at that...It cost me with upgrades around 3.5 million credits. Of course I have a jump drive and a docking computer to help with the missions' time liimits for quick docking!!! The taxi services and shuttle services range from a few hundred thousand credits to nearly 7,000,000 million credts!!! I switch back and forth from running taxi to bounty hunting which pays about the same...In the bounty hunting the bad guys are the same as your level.......so be well prepared!!! I have the download I got yesterday to help run my factories with internal shipping and stocking my factories so I can free up more time to do missions. It is at the offical web site at...http:/www.egosoft.com/download/x3ap/bonus_en.php....it has the Dock Manager, Supply Manager, the Satellite relay on enemy sector incursion, mosquito missle defense system and more.......keeps the game vanilla, not a MOD!!! Awesome!!!! Good Hunting!!!

[Basho]

Originally posted by mmmcheesywaffles:

Salvage!

Even a lowly M3 is worth a few million. Expecially when you barter any salvaged missiles.
Just fly through the War Sectors and claim any ships left without pilots then keep them safe while they slowly fly to the Shipyards. While escorting them keep your eyes open for more missiles. They can be sold at any station through Barter and a good deal can earn you 50k for just one missile [with a bit of bartering]

wow that sounds awesome, war profiteering at its finest ;D
i will have to try that :3

also, currently i started as bankrupt assassin and did combat missions like OP did. some give you over a million. i use 8 mass drivers on the starting ship (mamba) and it can even rip up an M6 with some tricky piloting. when i got enough money i bought a split elephant (TL) and now i use the elephant to do station building missions and "purchase this ship for me"-missions by jumping the elephant to a shipyard, docking the ship on the elephant and jumping to the client sector. those missions can give you millions but you have to check the rewards to make sure it is profitable.

speaking of station building, im just starting out in that area. does anyone have any experience in the macro scale effects of such missions? that is to say, do station building stimulate the global economy or can it have a negative impact in a wider perspective?

[Pyromancer]

Usually it's an improvement, some goods get in short supply when AI is left to build and remove stations as it pleases. That is especially true for goods like space weed or majaglit consumed by all races but produced by only one.
Build a space weed and space fuel complex with product price set to average minus 1 credit. Then camp its exit with a police license and freight scanner, scan all undocking freighters and destroy them/get them to drop contraband they just bought from you, then drop the goods back into the complex for the next smuggler

[Rabcor]

That's crazy evil Pyro! and i was headed down the same path as Basho, i'm just spamming missions trying to max out my rep with one faction maximize the profitsssss i gain from them. Due to just spamming missions i'm up to like 4 mil now without much time and i'm at rank 8/10 with the Argons. once i get to 10 i guess the missions will pay insane amounts.

I like to use dirty tricks like for example, when someone asks me to go pick up a 5 mil worth ship for them and intend to only pay me like 50-200k for it, i can't help but notice that at the expense of a little reputation with the faction that guy that hired me is from, i could make a million or two instead.

I also managed to buy a used Mercury Tanker and Mercury Hauler both under 100k which means i can start doing a little bit of trading practically for free.

It seems a lot to me like the developers wanted us to make money by doing missions rather than anything else, thus give us very good rewards for the missions and improving depending on how far we are in the game. And i also get the feeling this was done so new players such as myself don't feel like they're bankrupt all the time. I just hope in Rebirth they'll do a proper tutorial... Getting into this game was very hard because it sortof just throws you right into the deep part of it all instead of giving you a chance to start slowly (for example, tutorial storyline which will teach you how the economics work and how you can earn money to begin with.)

Some people like to do this whole thing without firing a single shot though. (but i just like the combat too much)

i've read a lot of guides, one promising that i haven't tried following yet but feel like could work out is to start as a trader, send the mercury to Ore Belt or Emperor's Mines, buy the ore for minimum price (50) and then seel it for 200+ in the cloudbase areas. While that is going on send the deceiver to yaki space to get a cargo hold life support so you can make it do passenger transport missions for quick and easy cash.

The guy that wrote the guide said he also likes to use the Yaki stock exchange on his discoverer and then go explore on the discoverer. The first area he aims for being Plutarch Mining HQ as their stock sells for minimum on the stock market, and wit a roughly 15 million investment in all their stock you can "manipulate" the stock market by using your trading ships to buy and sell in that area (causing stock rpices to rise/drop thus basically giving you extra moneys) The guide was written 4th august 2012 by Gaiagrim, he also claims that by doing this he got 940 million in about 2 days of playing. Its an old guide but looks like it'd still work at least to an extent.

[Basho]

Originally posted by Pyromancer:

Usually it's an improvement, some goods get in short supply when AI is left to build and remove stations as it pleases. That is especially true for goods like space weed or majaglit consumed by all races but produced by only one.
Build a space weed and space fuel complex with product price set to average minus 1 credit. Then camp its exit with a police license and freight scanner, scan all undocking freighters and destroy them/get them to drop contraband they just bought from you, then drop the goods back into the complex for the next smuggler :smile:

hahaha, oh my sides. i'm laughing so hard right now ;D

[CTHOMP]

Well, you are lucky... from the look of things, Rebirth is going to be super easy hand held mode with a lot of what makes the current games great/challenging removed from it. Hopefully you don't get more than you bargained for...

[Basho]

Originally posted by clthomps:

Well, you are lucky... from the look of things, Rebirth is going to be super easy hand held mode with a lot of what makes the current games great/challenging removed from it. Hopefully you don't get more than you bargained for...

well i am a bit worried about the official statements saying things like "who would want to pilot big and slow capitals, thats boring!". well to me thats the most fun parts of the game, so... i will keep an eye on things but i am a bit worried.

[Rabcor]

I hope in that regard they just make big ships fast and small ones even faster.

[CTHOMP]

And they elminated SETA... so you'll have to sit through traveling from place to place (I know, there are some sort of 'highway' system), but I doubt the highways go EVERYWHERE and will make leaving/docking at stations take much longer, or if you just want to pass time while waiting for something to be build/created at a factory, or you want to wait for a ship to fly by, or any number of things that one finds SETA useful for...

[Rabcor]

Seta is brutally useful, to remove it is a bad idea. to improve it would be a better one.

[CTHOMP]

Agree... too bad they didn't. It may make the new game unplayable if you can't speed up time. The last thing we want to do is slowly fly through the galaxy having to wait for things to happen.