Any tips for money making?

[Flip]

New player, restarted, Cradle of Humanity playthrough. Still in Terran space before being teleported to Grand Exchange. Trying to make some money early on but there are zero missions it seems and those that I can get are not suitable for me (build a station etc). Any recommendations for early game money making when I have 200 cr to my name and no side missions seem to be spawning.

EDIT: Thank you all for all of your helpful responses, super appreciated!

[T600_Mod]

there is a mission money increase per mission mod on steam workshop,

And there is a mod that increases the mission spawns per system on Nexus,

The one on nexus is highly recommended, you can set the mission spawning from the system from default of 7-8 to 25-100+

but you need another mod to make it work
I just got this game a month ago and nexus mods in the last few days have been game changing...

Also The Nividium cartel Mod on steam, makes early mining fleets profitable enough to buy ,

I play as argon forget the playthrough but the hatikvah one, first thing get the hatikvah ship, sell your first ship and buy a miner for nividium

I buy up a nividium mining fleet, and start making milliions in the first few minutes of the game, its still not enough to get a battle fleet or a station, but give it a few hours and you can get what you need.

[Farrel]

Mission running and manual trading are horrible for making money early game, generally, at least... Occasionally you'll get a mission to set up a minefield or something in Xenon territory, and those can be quite profitable if you're willing to accept the risk.

With 200 cr to your name and a basic ship? How much risk are you willing to take?

The more risk you're willing to take, the more money there is out there to grab quickly.

Scavenging wares after a battle is frequently recommended. There are a few well known hotspots around the galaxy where enemy factions tussle... Sometimes they'll drop some valuables.

Data vaults can be useful for a kick start, and there are some useful ships abandoned out there... But for both, you'll be looking for ages or looking up a guide... Fairly safe money and resources, but not unlimited.

Personally? I go with piracy... You have to be a competent combat pilot, but you can steal ships reasonably safely if you pay attention to what you're stealing. And occasionally you'll hit the jackpot of, say... A freelancer katana carrying 100 advanced satellites.

Early game, I'd recommend exploring more than anything. Keep an eye open for opportunities.

Once you get enough, you can set up some basic mining operations, then build your own refining facilities for better profits and slowly push that snowball until it starts to roll on it's own... But yeah, as soon as you get the option to get AI pilots earning for you? do it... Don't hoard your money too much, it's not doing anything in your wallet... Spend money to make money.

Also... Avoid spending money when you can... Steal blueprints ;)

[T600_Mod]

On the nexus topic,
there are bounty hunter, Courier, Mining, Builder, Sabateur, Spy, And more guilds.
with another mod.

Reputation and professions = Mod

More Generic Mission = Mod

Citizenship =mod,
Crime and justice= Mod
NPC reactions= mod

Free ships for exploring sectors , marines required
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2074838459&searchtext=explorer

Honestly I get so many missions its pick and choose which to take, and I take some just to abort them later if they are out of the way.
for me missions are just extra money while I grind reputation

[[Vilu]]

If you're confident in your combat skills and in your ship, find your way to the super-highway and sit on it. Keep your map/mission offers open while traveling in it and look for escort miner missions. These usually reward 350k-700k per mission (as far as I can remember) plus the kills usually happen near stations for additional rep gains. Alternatively look around Terran stations for them if your reputation is below -9 for other factions.

Find active warzones zones and swoop in when it's clear and vacuum all the loots left behind (default key O). They say this got nerfed so I don't know how good it is, but the SETA parts can be sold at ~130k a pop at regular traders in station docks (they go to your inventory, not the ship).

Find the free abandoned ships the game spawns at set locations and either use them yourself to make credits or just sell for pure credits. There's 1 destroyer and couple M sized ones just in the base game (no dlc required) (and few small ones, but they sell for nothing).

When you have some money setup some miners in asteroid belt.

[T600_Mod]

there are also better boarding mods, worth mentioning if your want to try pirating and selling the ships for cash at the start,

search better pirate in steam workshop,
it adds way better attack to board on enemy or neutral ships, and makes your followers attack to capture the ship,

this game was fun at first but I found so many bugs that mods fixed,

I am considering making a mod list for other to play for 7.00

[Wraith]

Combat mission and scavenging battlefield for loot can get you bank

I like afk in an active asteroid mining location with my pilot in repeat loot drop for the spacefly egg while I’m at work

Mining can give good passive income if you use local automine and there a refinery in same sector

Trading is a more advanced behavior but if you exploit supply and demand and discounts you will get some good money there as well

[uni790]

The easiest way to start making money, espically in terran space, explore Sol until you find the Oort belt, buy some small mining ships, set them to auto mine silicon there, there will never be any Kha'ak spawns in that sector, so they can mine freely there forever, nice passive income for the rest of eternity.

If the terrans don't have an accessable wharf find Segaris(I think I'm spelling that wrong, the terran's second faction), or argon space and grab one or three of theirs instead.

No need for mods, or boarding, or anything advanced.

[PeaceMaker]

Originally posted by Flip:

New player, restarted, Cradle of Humanity playthrough. Still in Terran space before being teleported to Grand Exchange. Trying to make some money early on but there are zero missions it seems and those that I can get are not suitable for me (build a station etc). Any recommendations for early game money making when I have 200 cr to my name and no side missions seem to be spawning.

A simple way to begin:

1, There should be simple leak repair missions or mine destruction missions.
or...

2, You could go to station and just hang around watching traffic until you hear a criminal call and see the red target and shoot the criminal (make sure it says criminal). You'll get rewards for that. Beware hitting the Station, Shoot when it is clear. More missions will start opening up if you do well there.
or...

3. You could look for floating asteriods watch for a glint then get close and shoot out the crystals, then collect them and sell. You can make a bit this way.
or...

4. Finally, you could fly around using the Highway and check the map until you see lots of blue and red dots- this will be a battle. Then look out for where you see the action. Wait nearby, Check the map again, you should see lots of little boxes (crates) sneak around and collect as many as you can, avoiding combat. Go to the closest base and sell- A good way to make early cash for no pain.

All you need is patience.

[Gibbo]

Loot from battles between Argon and HOP. They will be raging with each other not long after a new start and they fight with destroyers so plenty of loot to afford your first miner which should be an M class around 700,000 credit. Once you can afford it buy it and then make your way to Oort Cloud. Deep in Terran space. You will probably have to raise rep with Terrans, but this is easy. Shoot criminals at their station. Do this 6 times and you can trade with them. Once you get to Oort Cloud you will see several stations paying top dollar for ore, silicon and hydrogen. Take advantage of this as your M miners will be safe in Terran space as there is no Xenon or Khaak (pirates do not attack miners). They will be safe all game unless you declare war on the Terrans so use this as your first solid passive income. Put 6 M class in there and 2 each ming ore, silicon and hydrogen and you can soon afford a L miner and you can put these in more dangerous places as only a massive Khaak swarm can kill these and those are pretty rare.

And that's it. That's how I start my multi-billion/trillion empire. Good luck!

[76561198055083273]

Do missions then buy a m miner and set it to auto mine. Repeat this until you have 7-10 m miners then afk for 10 hours then you'll have like 60 million credits in no time

[Balm]

Originally posted by Flip:

New player, restarted, Cradle of Humanity playthrough. Still in Terran space before being teleported to Grand Exchange. Trying to make some money early on but there are zero missions it seems and those that I can get are not suitable for me (build a station etc). Any recommendations for early game money making when I have 200 cr to my name and no side missions seem to be spawning.

alright forget everything else you read in this thread, follow the terran campaign until they give you some cash and goodies, then....

Do this: immediately begin buying M mineral (silicon) and gas (hydrogen) miners and set them to auto mine in the oort cloud system (bottom left of pluto). There are a ton of stations in oort cloud they can sell to, and will never run out of places to sell at small scale automining.

Ignore the asteroid belt system. Ignore everything else. Do oort cloud. AFK or something and just let it run overnight. There are no kaak in oort cloud so you can mine and sell automatically in total safety.

As soon as you can afford it, buy L mineral and gas storage and 2 or 3 point pier blueprints from faction leader in jupiter. Then, go and build a small 'mining station', in oort cloud. 1 terran luxury dock, 1 pier below it, 1 L miner and 1 L gas storage, and 1 s container storage.

Set up a buy/sell command for silicon/hydrogen in your station at lowest price possible for buy and +2 credits up from that for sell. Set a blacklist rule to only purchase from your own faction.

Then, assign a 1 or 2 star manager to the station and assign all your miners to the station. Then, begin buying M mineral and gas miners and assigning them as auto-trader for the station in a 1:1 ratio.

Congrats, you have now set up a local mining station that will supply the enormous amount of industry stations in oort cloud/pluto/nearby, and can scale up this operation to 40+ miners and traders before you run into oversupply problems. You can branch out to regular ore and other gas mining in small amounts to keep supplies balanced across the board.

You can also easily detect whatever shortage is in the nearby systems and then create a station that makes it yourself and begin selling it to whoever needs it so they can keep producing and therefore keep buying ore/silicon from you.

- Make sure to buy a couple scout ships and fully explore the surrounding systems and place sats on all the stations.
- Make sure to set the station funding to close to its 'estimate' level, or they won't automatically send you batches of money they make. You will have to take money from them manually, and that's kind of annoying.
- Once you understand how to set up a mining station economy, you can go put one in asteroid belt also to sell to the inner terran systems, but be warned that mining there spawns khaak and khaak hives, which means you will need a defense force and eventually the ability to kill enemy stations. If you follow the terran storyline you will eventually be given a destroyer that can handle it, but until then you will need patrols to protect your miners, or your will suffer loses.

(BTW it's not really a huge hassle to be teleported to grand exchange, you can just fly back to terran space and ignore that whole storyline until you feel ready. Yes its nice to unlock teleportation, but not absolutely crucial)

[Venerable_Sin]

Scout, run missions, set up auto miners. Then scout run missions, set up satellite network. Then scout. run missions, set up auto traders. Then scout, run missions, Increase auto miner and auto trader sizes. Then Enjoy your game as you see fit now that you have passive income established.

[Bussy]

1. Scout a shipyard
2. fly to faulty logic VII -> Claim abandoned destroyer
3. Immediately sell to shipyard
4. Buy Shuyaku Vanguard, 220 marines, main shields
5. Create plot in neutral sector -> hire builder
6. Wait for it to deploy Then do a fly-by boarding
(Travel drive as close as possible, pause, Right-click board, set all options to Very strong -> maintain distance -> Send all marines, then unpause, keep flying past stop 40k out. Afk until captured.
7. Dock builder at shipyard sell everything on it, then the ship itself.

Congrats you now have 20-30* million *mk2/3 XL thrusters sell for a lot

This is faster then missions or trading and can done with the garbage elite starter ship

[Doom]

Originally posted by Flip:

New player, restarted, Cradle of Humanity playthrough. Still in Terran space before being teleported to Grand Exchange. Trying to make some money early on but there are zero missions it seems and those that I can get are not suitable for me (build a station etc). Any recommendations for early game money making when I have 200 cr to my name and no side missions seem to be spawning.

Been a long time since I started over, but basically:

* Take station scan and satellite repair missions. If there are no missions in your sector, ride the highway.
* Get a miner or a trader. Make sure this thing has shields and ideally flak turrets.
* Begin amassing money, and get a second miner. That's where you begin to snowball.

There's also crystal gathering minigame which can give you money if you're in a pinch, but it has been nerfed.

And regarding miner, The best idea is to get an L miner, but they're pricey early on. The best purchase is L miner with Mk3 shields and Argon flak cannons in all turret, but that is like 3 million and can be tough early on. I personally like paranid ones, but that's matter of taste. Make sure to get at least a captain, but ideally at least half of a crew. With M miner watch out for Kha'ak and be ready to run. Remember that you can mine in safe sectors though yields are likely to be lower.

Another possible sources of some cash is spaceflies (which are illegal though, so watch out) and spacefly caviar. If there's a conflict zone where NPCs fights, like a gate with frequent xenon invasions, you can gather drops there and sell them.

If you fight pirates, watch out for situation when pilot bails and ship goes blue. Do not blow up the ship, claim it. You can resell it. Its hull will be badly damaged, though, but you can repair it with hand laser for free. It'll be very slow process.

Those are ways to do it without relying on derelicts. With derelicts you can go faster, but that basically requires you to rely on "foreknowledge" and knowing where abandoned ships are.

[climbingeastofwinter]

Crystal farming from asteroids, if you can't find any missions, have no money, and feel like you have no other options. Also, farming criminal traffic near stations. Criminal traffic farming doesn't really pay well but in the beginning it can be a great relaxed way to build a little reputation and also get some spending money. Once you have ~80k or so you could head to Pioneers/Antigone territory and join their trade guilds for reliable, easy missions that generally just involve deployable stuff, recovering stuff, or doing easy maintenance. Usually. Joining the guilds doesn't take more reputation than it does to just be able to dock at their faction representative stations, but you do have to pay to join. Once you do you'll always have selections of missions available through the guilds near their territory.