Getting started for new players

[Darius]

OK, I'm not going to create a guid because I never finish them.

There's a lot of misinformation floating around about needing to cheat in the beginning and that just is not the case. Key thing to understand that is that although this is largely a sandbox game and you could very well never trade a single item, the whole economy of the game revolves around trade.

If you have never played before, or have never successfully managed to get it going in the game - this is a brief synopsis of things you can do to get going.


1) Select the Humble Merchant "start". This will start you in Heron's Nebula, give you 2 ships: a Mercury and a Discoverer as well as about 20k credits to start trading with immediately.

2) Start trading ore. There are 2 ore mines and 1 silicon mine in Heron's Nebula. Avoid the Silicon mine like the plague (for now) and concentrate on the ore. Both of these mines should be near full to start.. low end price on ore is 50cr/unit. You can sell this for as high as 185cr/unit at a starved factory. You can hold a bit over 300 units of ore and a in a best case scenario you can pull in around 35k per load.

There are only 1 or 2 factories in Heron's Nebula that consume ore, periodically you can find a quick trade in sector but it will not be common. Target the factory and hit "U", this will bring up the remote trade window and you can see what the stock levels look like before landing.

Fly through the south gate to Argon Prime and fly around to discover the factories here. Right near the gate is a missile factory that is typically in need of ore. Key factory to discover here is the Advanced Satelite Factory near the East gate. You will want to keep this factory working for you. Hit "R" to bring up your property, select your Discoverer and issue it a remote command to dock at the Equipment Dock in Argon Prime.

Fly through the East gate to The Wall. Pick up the three Solar Power Plants on your sector map, dock at the one selling the cheapest power and get a full load.

Go back to Argon Prime and find the best place to sell your energy cells. Always give preference to the Satellite factory and keep in mind you'll be going back and forth between Herron's Nebule and The Wall for a while. Going to the far side of the sector and back for an extra could K of profit may not be worth your time. Keep an eye on the other factories in the sector.

Depending on your luck, the Ore supply should hold up for 3-5 trade runs before your returns start dimishing due to increasing cost.

Head through the north gate of Heron's Nebula to discover Power Circle. There are a few more Solar Power Plants here as well as an Ore mine or two. Unfortunately, there aren't many quick trade opportunities here. Energy Cells are good for extra money on a return trip or keeping a factory up and running, but they are not good for a long term profit.

Head through the south gate to Home of Light. Keep flying to the south gate to discover the Ore Belt sector. The Ore Belt is rather large, what you are looking for here is to "ID" the 2-4 mines that may be here. It varies from game to game and "GOD" isn't kind to the Ore mines here. GOD is the behind the scenes system that processes the game's meta data. It will periodically close unprofitable factories and open new ones.

Once your game matures, you will typically find that Ore is the single most under traded commodity in the game. Energy Cells is the crowning champ in the beginning but the NPCs get this under control eventually. Most energy traders are in extremely slow super tankers and it takes time for that situation to come under control.

3) As your cash flow permits...
-Max out your engine tuning on the mercury
-Buy a jump drive from Terracorp in Home of Light (this will revolutionize your trading)
-Buy Advanced Satellites and deploy them in your trading sectors (for most sectors, coordinates of 0,0,-10k will work fine - bring up your frieght and eject 1 satellite from your frieght);
-Fly out ot Legend's Home to OTAS HQ and buy a Docking Computer (autodock within 5k of the docking clamps, this will be a godsend). This is a dangerous journey, but less frustrating that trying to raise your reputation with the Paranid initially. Gate sequence from Argon Prime E, S, E, S, E, S, E, E, E, E, S You could use the Discoverer for this journey, however the Discoverer won't be able to jump back.
-Max out the cargo hold and engine tuning on the Discoverer. Buy the Trade Command Software packages and set it to a manual trade run for Energy to any factory of your choice. This is a very fast ship and while the hold is small, even externded, it can make money for you instead of sitting in a dock somewhere.
-Keep an eye out for ships for sale. The most important being an Express. Once you have a jump drive and the docking computer, you can realistically take Passenger transport missions and start pulling in a lot of credits very quickly.
-Experiment with setting up a factory. Go with a Medium, botton tier resource producer. I would recommend a Plankton farm in a sector with Cattle ranches. You can always go with an old standby, which is a Wheat farm next to the 2 Space Fuel refineries in Heron's Nebula. NPC traders do not trade secondary resources, so if you go the Plankton route - the trading is all on you. This is also a good use for the Discoverer and any other small, fast ship you may've picked up on a fire sale. Without putting out 100's of thousands outfitting a mercury to handle the trading you can use several small, fast ships. Simply set their home to the factory and sell for best price. The factory option for sell price will apply here as well as range. If you don't want them to leave the sector - set it to zero; never want them to sit idle, set the sell price to 20. The max price on Plankton is 22 and since their holds are small their sales will not fill the stores on the cattle ranches fast enough to drop the buy price by more than 1 or 2 over time. You will not get rich, but you will learn more about how factories work and get a good understanding how long they take to pay themselves off.

4) Trades to be wary of:
-Silicon : These mines tend to fill up quickly and sit idle for long stretches. There just are not many factories that need silicon and you have to be careful about buying it and knowing you can dump it FAST.
-Warheads : Another tempting buy. These tend to get backed up on the production side as well. Problem is, the Mercury actually holds quite a bit more than you can sell at one factory. If you arent careful, you may end up with about 200 units sitting in your hold and looking for a place to sell them. There are a couple of Argon trading docks that will take them, but not many.
-Missiles : Some missiles can be sold indefinitely to Equipment Docks and yes this is considered to be a bug. However some can't be sold anywhere or only in very small quantities.
-Quantum Tubes : very expensive item, high returns.. similar to Silicon, very small market


This should get anyone going with a profitable system. You will benefit from exploring, trying new things and taking advantage of steals and deals when and if you find them. Every game is different. GOD might kill some important factories in the first week of the game, or you may run into the Paranid destroying half the facotires in Home of Light - which has happened in 3-4 of my games over the years.

[Laptop]

You should create a guide for this, or if you'd prefer not to then I could consider pinning this if you tidy it up and do a final revision on it.

[insolent1]

Nice work,

Things I would add is, run spacefuel in the discoverer for 2 runs(other traders max out the trading station) this gives a nice little cash boost that you can use to upgrade the disco.
Remote trading is the way to go as soon as you can so you need to get a trading system extension in argon prime asap.
Recover the abandoned ships in savage spur and ocracoke's storm, sell the weapons and ships for 4-6million
Buy a TM(yaki chokaro) and get jumpdrives on everything.....Profitsss

[dah88]

Thanks for taking the time Darius! Just what I needed!

[Darius]

Ok, I caved.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=736285681

[Darius]

I try to give advice to further the game system, or at the very least doesnt hurt it.

The same could be said of the construction missions. You can make a lot of money doing every one you come across, but they're so random and non-sensical most of the time. I've moved on to only do them if they make sense.

Illegal goods are dead ends and end up getting NPCs destroyed.

The derelict ships are in the easter egg category, I try to avoid them unless there's a particular one I want later to actually produce.

[Savar]

Interesting, might give the game another go. Thanks.

[CTHOMP]

One way to make good money quick is ships scan missions. Use full speed discovered an adjust fly around scanning everything you can. You get easy money, even more than you get from asteroid scanning. Both are also helpful in exploring nearby sectors and all that.