not enough time to do missions?

[Dracos]

Ive been playing for a while and whenever i take delivery missions or bounty mission i dont ever have enough mission time to leave the system before the timer runs out! i usually only have 1:30 seconds to complete a bounty mission. is this normal?

[Patastrophic]

Are you taking the hardest bounty missions? Those can be pretty brutal.

Most of the content above "easy" difficulty is intended for a ship with a jump drive. You can shave off literally hours with a little bit of planning.

[Dracos]

no not taking hard missions. ever since starting a new game i have been unable to do nearly any side missions.

[Fragmentality]

Many of the missions are designed for a specific kind of ship with specific equipment. You'll find many of the delivery mission will require a TS equiped with a jumpdrive to make it in time as said above. A fast TS like a Caiman might be able to do some of them. Bounty missions are the same way except with a Combat ship. I would recommend Asteroid Scans(require mineral scanners) using a M5 like a Discoverer as they are pretty easy to do and most M5s are fast enough to do them. Defend/Patrol and Police Scans(Require Police License) missions are pretty easy, even if you don't have a good combat ships, the NPCs can help you out if your having trouble. Passenger Missions are great if you got a TP and they're pretty easy and good pay, but again some may require a Jumpdrive. You can use non-TP ships on some of the Passenger Missions but you'll need a Cargo Life Support. Abandoned/Stolen ships can be very profitable at low levels if you steal the ship and sell it, but this will lower your rep and send police to destroy the ship. Be careful with ship recovery missions because the ship you need to get is often damaged and slow and therefore may not make it back the mission giver in time.

In general, I would do trading until you can get a Jumpdrive to do missions effectively. And naturally save before you do a Mission, the more missions you fail the lower your rep. I believe the lower the rep the less money you make.

[Dracos]

thats sounds like a great strategy! would you suggest playing the humble merchant?

[Fragmentality]

Humble Merchant is one of the easier starts, you'll start with a Mercury Freighter(TS) and a Discoverer(M5), and Neutral rep with the main factions. So right off the start you'll have a trader and a scout to explore the galaxy and do some easy missions.

Some people like to sell one of the ships first to get some cash so they can equip one of them with equipment for missions. For example you could sell the Mercury and use the credits to buy a Mineral Scanner for Asteroid Scan Missions.

[Hydris]

I did some "Hard" and "Very Hard" Passenger/Military Transport missions in the Terran sectors. Since they don't have jump gates (needed for Jumpdrives) the missions are pretty straightforward, fly the shortest route and at the fastest speed (but I was piloting a transport ship with all Engine Tunings, Rudder Optimizations, and ship upgrades).

I assuming the other types of Terran side missions won't require saving a massive amount of time with a Jumpdrive.

Edit: Grammar

[Dracos]

Did you start as the terran soldier? i have no other terran starts available.

[Hydris]

Originally posted by Famous Dracos:

Did you start as the terran soldier? i have no other terran starts available.

I started with Humble Merchant. First playthrough ever [and I'm still on it]; however Humble Merchant is an Argon. There's other starts that need to be unlocked, but Humble Merchant isn't one of them.

[Dracos]

I think you have just inspired me! i'm going to try that method out. do you have any starting tips for humble merchant? never played that character yet.

[Hydris]

The Humble Merchant starts off with a slow Freighter and a faster Discoverer. You won't be doing much missions initially like the problem you seem to be having here too.

How Humble Merchants can start is doing regular manual trade runs (buying at a low price, selling high), and wandering between sectors before you can actually afford, say, a fighter for Combat missions, a transport ship for Passenger/Military transport [also viable for small goods like ferrying Entertainment Chips, Luxury Food goods in the missions it asks for it].

There's a Rimes Factory in the starting location selling for the minimum price, almost always when first starting, and what I did to get a minor jump start was to buy all I could fit and sell them elsewhere for the best price (Argon Trading Stations will buy it at Average or the Median price).

In close by areas you have Argon Prime, where you can buy the TP class ship, etc and Home of Light, where you can get the Jump Drive, Best Buys/Sells Locator, and Trade Command MK3 (have an NPC do those trade runs for you). These and your starting location are very far from the Terran sectors though.

Edit: Mentioned other Home of Light ship upgrades.

[Dracos]

should i sell the discoverer and use that to have more credits? and thank you very much for your help.

[Hydris]

Originally posted by Famous Dracos:

should i sell the discoverer and use that to have more credits? and thank you very much for your help.

Really depends on what you plan on doing. Since there's possibilities of doing the easy Covert Missions (i.e follow an NPC and watch them dock, that slow freighter normally wouldn't be able to keep up) with some Discoverer early in the game.

You can easily get credits buying/selling e.g Silicon and Energy Cells from Power Circle (North of Herron's Nebula) to the Boron sectors further North. You'll want to find and change routes since later on the NPC traders might notice and start competing with you on that route.

[Doing that will also get you trade and faction reputation ranks which IIRC affect the payout for and availability of missions-- though if you're higher ranked, they may expect more from you]

Edit: Added segment on NPCs

[Dracos]

Thanks for all your tips and help! well i'm going to try out a merchants life. have a good night.

[Veeshan]

For reference, I started with Humble Merchant and did not sell my Discoverer. I threw some lasers on it and took it into combat - dead. Instantly. That was on an easy mission, with another ship helping (a much better one). Might be best to sell it. But it was very handy for scouting the sectors.