Best way to make money

[MrToft]

Whats the best way you guys are making money? easiest for me is trading microships

[Shroomworks]

Crystal mining is quite effective and so are missions. There are some that require you to scan a station and often pay roughly 150k. Do a few of them and you'll have the money for your first freighter or mining ship in no time.

[BlueBawlz]

id noticed mining ships (m) pays 30k per load the (L) pays more, start by getting multiple miners pirates dont tend to mess with them and trades pirates like.

[Shroomworks]

Originally posted by BlueBawlz:

id noticed mining ships (m) pays 30k per load the (L) pays more, start by getting multiple miners pirates dont tend to mess with them and trades pirates like.

Depending on what you mine, it can pay more than double that amount. Had a full load of silicon last night that i sold for 78k.

[Mike]

Buy mining ships, set to auto mine and spread them over the sectors. Place satellites next to refineries as you go and keep buying more and more mining ships. I have 13 medium mining ships bringing in a steady stream of cash. I’m getting up to 20 medium, then going to start building large mining vessels.

Next step after that is placing my own refineries in key systems and working my own economy.

All the while I’m running around in my combat ship exploring and messing around while my miners make me money.

[Cesnek]

Originally posted by Lexa Monroe:

Whats the best way you guys are making money? easiest for me is trading microships

yes refund the game

[Svetlinka]

Crystal mining is most effective to gain cash but really boring (at least for me). Getting a lot of trade ships generates good profit but best is to get liners (big traders) since they can have quite a lot of ships docked within their hangars and usually not getting attacked by pirates. Mining is also a good way to do a clear profit (silicon mining) earns a lot of cash. Also you can do quite a lot of money fighting - Holy Vision sector is one gate away from xenon sector and they keep having conflicts. When make a good relation with them you earn good cash (10k for small ships, 20k for frigates and 200k for destroyers). Easy does it i did a lot of money by just going around this game fighting.

[Valetudin Arian]

Capturing construction ships and destroyers. at one stage I was lucky enough to have 3 enemy construction ships disabled and needing to be de-crewed for boarding, unfortunately I could not keep up with the demands of keeping the hulls of all 3 at 20% while getting their crews to use escape pods so had to detroy one instead of board it. But that made me 34+ million for the hour it took to get their crews to use escape pods until only the captains were left, and considering they can have 100+ crew its not too long a process. Destroyers are heaps quicker but less money also.

[AJRimmer Bsc Ssc]

Crystals and Crane capping

Crane cappig is the best way,cost of 60 marines and you get a crane.

[anarnam]

Fleet of silicon miners. Steady income.

[crazymotoman]

I started with crystal mining to get a few Miners going. I get five mineral miners then five gas miners and alternated till I had thirty of each. After you do this the gains from mining go down as each station fills up. But those stations that are full are making stuff so its time to get auto traders going and buy trade licences for the factions you like so you don't need to use satelites to get the best deals. That's your initial passive income. After that I start scanning stations for blueprints and increasing exploration, then I start building stations using the crystal mining method to fund their building. I'm not much for combat though, I'm sure you can go much faster capping ships to fund your station building its just not my cup of tea.

[Elder Drake]

tld;dr version: Set yourself up for a Claytronics station asap. The Encycolpedia even states it is always in demand and is the highest priced Ware that will always sell. Bad thing is it takes a lot of start up money to get going but...

(you can do this on a fresh start, in the starting ship with zero upgrades)

Go to Faulty Logic from Holy Vision southern jumpgate, go through the highway there (in the first Faulty Logic area) into next Faulty Logic sector. Upon exiting bust a hard 90 degree turn right (watch out for minefields). Search the western edge area for an abondoned Odysseus Sentinel, it will show up on scanners easily when near it.

Use the 8-9m credits you get selling it to buy M class mining ships at a Low or Medium preset, also set them to Auto-Mine. Go back into the first Faulty Logic zone and farm crystals (the asteroid belts in this area have the highest concentration of crystal spawns I have personally seen). Focus on white Burnite crystals worth an average of 250k/each. Do this for another 30-60 minutes, given your luck you should be able to buy more miners. Get up to 8 miners, I usually do 4 Drill and 4 Gas (starting off) and then get 8 M class traders again set at Min or Med preset, set them to Auto-Trade (if they are not at a 3 star pilot level have them distribute wares until they are), this will not make you a lot of money but will passively grind reputation for you.

Final step is to complete the PHQ chain and focus on scanning modules then teleportation. Scan modules for the following blueprints (or buy them if your luck or patience wears thin):
Energy Cells
Microchips
Silicon Wafers
Quantun Tubes
L Class Habitat of your choice
L Class Storage for containers, solids, and liquid
Argon disc defense platform (optional but imo is the best defense platform in the game)
Large E Dock
Luxury 6S3M Dock
Basic connectors (I prefer Argon)
Administration Module (optional, good for claiming a territory like Nopoleus (spelling?) Fortune)
Antimatter Cells
Claytronics

It is a LOT of work but while you are doing this and goofing off your trade fleet will have generated more credits and most importantly rep for you. Grind one faction to 20 and choose a nice kitted out M class ship (I like the Pyranid Nemesis myself). Crystal farm some more then when around 30m credits start laying out a closed loop Claytronics setup where you only need to rely on ores and gases for imports to your station. Then remember that a new station will always start losing money until the manager gets everything stocked up right and the workforce grows (seems to be 3 game hours or so, SETA can help immesly here). I have one station that supports 3 Claytronics modules and I make an insane amount passively from it and I do not spend a dime nor time on it.

Long post but I can not think of a single better way to make money with no effort (after setting up) than Claytronics.

[jd6885]

Dont use autotraders. They are buggy and are inefficient. do some missions and save up for medium miners (i would suggest plutus miners). As you travel around, set up a satellite network so your miners know the best stations to sell their goods(regulsr satellite only)

Set your miner to automine nividium only nividium until there is no more demand. And play more missions to gain more reputation and money while your autominers are doing their thing.Buy more miners with the profits (aim for 5 or 6). Each nividium haul will net you like $300k. Use that money to build up your player hq station. Assuming you’ve completed the phq missions which should only take a couple hours, you will get access to research. I would research the ability to steal blueprints first as this will save you money so you dont have to buy blueprints yourself.

Steal blueprints for manufacturing silicon wafers, then microchips, smart chips, advanced electronics (the order depends on how your in game economy is doing so check your map to see which wares are in most demand). Build when you have money.

Assign medium sized traders and miners to your station. About 4 miners per refinery and 2 or 3 per ware should be enough, depending on how plentiful silicon is in your stations surrounding sectors is and how many prodction facilities you build of each ware.

Do not use large miners and traders. I tried using large traders but they are not worth it. Their travel drives say they are 2x faster than mediums but their pathing is inefficient as they take a while to accelerate and cant use highways like medium traders can. Highway speeds are like 10x faster than the fastest travel drive.

[aduin.finrod89]

I'm for capturing ships.
Actually, I've some problem with pirates and... I always take their ships and sell it.
Actually I've done something near 10M with S sized ships. So, we can tell taht "easy and funny".

[Darkgineer]

Originally posted by Elder Drake:

tld;dr version: Set yourself up for a Claytronics station asap.

Thanks for this mini-guide, dude. But I have one question -- how do you sale your claytronics? I set up a factory in Nopileos' Fortune, but there is no stations in universe, that buy claytronics directly.

[Viral]

Crystal farm, while doing so buy mining ships, set to Nvidium (try your hardest to find decent autominer pilots) any ship will do, but teladi ones are nice.

Give it a few hours / days depending if you go after the seta, have a fleet building upto about 10 doing Nvidium, stop at 10. Leave them to mine, by now you`ll have stopped mining crystals through boredom and chances are you`ve found enough money and moved onto finding a decent fighter. While your doing so your income will be nicely piling up.

At some point your gonna hit a point your income frequency drops off. Mostly through limited places that buy and use Nvidium and war.

At this point build a factory for whats severly blocking production around the universe, usually its the same for everyone, but check anyway. Switch your miners, have 2 for each resource you need to mine (MAKE SURE YOU BUILD IN A SYSTEM WITH ALL THE RESOURCE YOU NEED). Buy a few good medium traders, set rest of your miners to silicon mining.

(I like to have a fleet of about 6 > 10 ore and silicon miners flying around for bonus cash and feed the universe economy if you wanna build this up as a side project you can, ALWAYS use your cash to get more income, if its sitting there, its wasted)

Add more traders if you need to. Early on though, don`t loose the demand by flooding the market if you can help it.

Done. Let the money roll in. See what the next resource thats blocking production around the map is, rinse repeat.

Claytronics, hull, and microchips are good staple earners. But dont go for just 1 product and rely on that. Look at the market.

I tend to be a billionaire by day 3. Its really not hard.

There`s some good step by step guides out there, i found my niche that works for me and my play style, you will too.