Early money.

[EmperorPrince]

So Instead of starting one of the normal starts I did an X3 Universe start. To be honest I've been roaming around trying to find some quests of my skill for money. Found a few and only have 16k so far. Do I want to save for mining drills and ore scanners so I can begin to make money that way? And any other money making strategies would help. Thank you.

[Red Spot]

Early on I'd suggest 'jack of all trades' or 'opportunist'. Take a defend mission that spawns a single M5 for you to kill. Transport a few passengers. Deliver some medical equipment. For the love of any kind of god, do not take build missions early on.
Trade bulk goods, do not go the route of manually mining, you'll get bored of it before you realize how tedious it actually is.
Slowly work your way up, set up a few MK3 traders, set up some minor hubs for selling things, do 'easy to complete' missions that require no investment. In between scout the universe a bit and work at your rep by moving to different races space while you do some trading and missions.
Before you know it your empire, without you, makes good money and all races love you :)

[ShadowDragon_79]

As for fighting, first max out your speed and shields - best in an M3 if you already can afford that, but some M4 will also work for a while.


Also, early on, convoy-escort-missions can also be useful. Later on these get increasingly annoying however, since the transports to escort don''t get stronger (some TLs would be nice there...) .

And once Kha'ak M6 are spawned by the missions, you'd better have loads of (swarm-)missiles to spare, or several M6 or stronger (M7/M1/M2) yourself - otherwise, escorting doesn't make sense from that point on.

Station-defense-missions however will still be good at that point ( since stations have largely more armor-/shield-HP ) , AS LONG as you remember to stop eventual torpedoes launched by bombers or larger ships.

Originally posted by Red Spot:

...
Before you know it your empire, without you, makes good money and all races love you :)

Yes, earning reputation via missions is far too easy...

[EmperorPrince]

Originally posted by ShadowDragon_79:

As for fighting, first max out your speed and shields - best in an M3 if you already can afford that, but some M4 will also work for a while.


Also, early on, convoy-escort-missions can also be useful. Later on these get increasingly annoying however, since the transports to escort don''t get stronger (some TLs would be nice there...) .

And once Kha'ak M6 are spawned by the missions, you'd better have loads of (swarm-)missiles to spare, or several M6 or stronger (M7/M1/M2) yourself - otherwise, escorting doesn't make sense from that point on.

Station-defense-missions however will still be good at that point ( since stations have largely more armor-/shield-HP ) , AS LONG as you remember to stop eventual torpedoes launched by bombers or larger ships.

Originally posted by Red Spot:

...
Before you know it your empire, without you, makes good money and all races love you :)

Yes, earning reputation via missions is far too easy...

Another thing I'd like to ask is I've gone to equipment docks to find new weapons but cant find anything. Do I need ac ertain standin for them to be stocked?

[Red Spot]

Every race has its own selection of weapons, afaik only PPC can be found with all races. Stocks will go up and down so even a weapon that would be traded can be out of stock but it should show the weapon in the dock with a stock of '0'.

[Digger]

You make more money on missions by raising your ranks in combat, economic, and reputation. This raises the pay for combat (red target reticle), econ (gold credit symbol), and think (white lightbulb) missions respectively.

Combat kills raise combat rank.
Trading large amounts of bulk wares at or near their extremes, bartering wares for other wares, and selling weapons to certain stations (gun running) increase econ rank.
Completing missions, killing enemies of the faction who owns that sector, and to a far lesser extent trading increases rep.

[Siddha]

What is an X3 Universe start as distinct from a normal start?

A good way to make some early start-up cash is to collect missiles etc in a sector where there are pirate incursions... for example Elena's Fortune which borders two pirate sectors is a good spot to find missiles.

ps your race standing does not affect what is available... only what you can buy

[ShadowDragon_79]

Originally posted by Siddha:

What is an X3 Universe start as distinct from a normal start?

I'd guess EmperorPrince means the "Custom Start"-option?

I actually never tried it (had enough others in my setup) , so I'm not sure what that one would be like...

Originally posted by Siddha:

ps your race standing does not affect what is available... only what you can buy

Yes - the things your notoriety isn't high enough for should show up, but in red (unbuyable).

Should you however have gathered some of them ( e.g. by collecting specific missiles which require high notoriety ) , you can usually sell them without problems ( provided your notoriety is high enough to allow docking ) .
If you sell enough collected missiles, that can even raise your notoriety.

[EmperorPrince]

Originally posted by ShadowDragon_79:

Originally posted by Siddha:

What is an X3 Universe start as distinct from a normal start?

I'd guess EmperorPrince means the "Custom Start"-option?

I actually never tried it (had enough others in my setup) , so I'm not sure what that one would be like...

Originally posted by Siddha:

ps your race standing does not affect what is available... only what you can buy

Yes - the things your notoriety isn't high enough for should show up, but in red (unbuyable).

Should you however have gathered some of them ( e.g. by collecting specific missiles which require high notoriety ) , you can usually sell them without problems ( provided your notoriety is high enough to allow docking ) .
If you sell enough collected missiles, that can even raise your notoriety.

No I could buy the weapons they just wern't in stock and I was wondering if something dictated it.

[Classified: TS/BBR]

IMAO the easiest early way to make money is taxi missions, preferably Military(/Commerce Icon) over single passenger(/Think icon), as the latter have a fair chance of requiring a Passenger Transport & are generally on a much tighter deadline.

If you can acquire an Argon Discoverer Hauler with maxed out cargo capacity, then equip it with a Jump Drive & Cargobay LifeSupport System, Taxi missions that don't require a TP are generally very doable (once you have a TP, they're even more doable if you add a Transporter Device to one of the ships, as you only have to pick up the passenger in the TP, once they're onboard you can transfer them to a faster ship & send them on their way).

After that you want to acquire a TM (preferably a Chokara, Zephyrus, or Boa) so you can do "Return Abandoned Ship" missions (keeping your JD-equipped Disco on the TM means you have a spare JD so that any ship you need to return that can't dock with the TM can be temporarily equipped with a JD, then sent ahead, so that you can follow after & recover the JD helps), & these can get scary profitable when your Race Rep is near maximum but your Trade Rank isn't (use BigShip targets to train marines in Boarding, then sell them for 10s of Millions of Credits rather than the 100 or 200 thousand mission reward, also an easy way to acquire your first M7M [just make sure you jump it to Senator's Badlands so the police ships that spawn when you fail the mission are in a hostile sector & get killed without further impacting your Race Rep]).

[Valen]

Originally posted by EmperorPrince:

No I could buy the weapons they just wern't in stock and I was wondering if something dictated it.

Supply and demand of ingredients. Products are built in a certain time interval providing there are enough ingredients in the factory. (equipment docks do not produce on their own. Find a laser/shield/missile/etc. factory) So if it is out of stuff find that first and supply it from somewhere. You may have to look a few sectors away. Some items are optional to have in stock in the factory iirc. If it is there it will be used, if not, production can still continue. With a fast cargo ship and trade/cargo scanner you can make a lot of money outrunning and beating the ships of factories low on stocks.

The trick in the game is to notice that the economy is failing. (for older game versions there were programs to calculate the universe statistics of production. Sector planner or something it was called) There are not enough SPP, crystal fabs, lower and mid tier factories to supply the higher tiers like the weapon fabs. So production will eventually come to a stagnation or halt. Or a trickle for the most time.

[Digger]

Yes, supply the factories that make stuff you want to buy. You can do it at almost no cost if you get good at barter and have high rep and a really big freighter. Builds a ton of econ rank too.

And I agree the discoverer hauler is the 4th best M5 for passenger/courier missions. The others are the yaki fujin raider/sentinel, and #1 is the vanilla fujin with 87 medium cargo can haul up to 14 passengers at 400+ m/s. The econ type psgr missions can be delivered remotely, but the think type missions you must deliver them yourself.