any pirates able to give advice?

[SkollUlfr]

is there anyway to find cargo ships to rob, other than going to gate junction sectors or actively raiding a faction main sector?

[Chaoslink]

Not without just sitting around and waiting, no. You gotta go in and hit the factions. It really isn't worth doing to much until you have certain criteria met though. First, you need capital. If you lack sufficient funds to cover half your expected profits (for unbranding) it isn't effective as far as the time cost is concerned. Second, you also want a massive cargo bay, often a ton of extra credits and materials to apply extra space as needed as well. My ships often gain two or three upgrade slots above the 8-9 they already had just from the cargo bays I add. You want a mapped out faction or two so you can quickly find places to sell, though you also want to make sure you have the proper cargo licenses to transport the stolen, dangerous or illegal goods you might pick up. You also need a conveniently located smuggler to unbrand at. Lastly, you want a durable ship with good damage output.

Pirating just from random cargo ships is a mixed bag. Some goods aren't worth even picking up and others can prove to be an impossibly annoying sell. If you aren't collecting a lot of goods as well this can be a mediocre way of making money for the investment and rep loss to factions you can incur along the way. In the Xanion/Trinuim sectors with a ship capable of carrying the cargo of 20 stations, I've been able to pull in something like 200 mil in profits per run. However, you really end up needing to raid stations for worthwhile profits. The main reason being, if you raid certain station types like shipyards, equipment docks or military outposts, the cargo you'll get is universally carried between all the stations of that type. This makes them quick, easy profits. If you raid trading posts, you'll get a grab bag or random crap. Sometimes you get lucky and get a ton of high cost items, but you can get a lot of junk too. Learn your goods, anything that doesn't sell directly to common stations or that you don't have a trading post or factory ready to buy can often be better to sell off directly to the smuggler outpost without paying to unbrand.

Cargo ship raiding is... alright really early on I suppose. However, you're probably better off just finding asteroids to sell or farming materials and making some cash selling bits of that off if needed. Most of the time demanding one to dump cargo just loses it entirely an isn't as worth it even if they comply as the goods you really want are the legitimately "salvaged" goods that you pop out of the wreck once you destroy the ship. That cargo is not marked as stolen and won't cost you anything to sell. The real problem is that, unless you are hitting a cargo ship delivering to a station, you can't tell what they have most of the time and even if you have the scanner to see, most of it is trash that isn't worth the effort.

Its really just a mid to late game thing if you ask me. Even then, you have to be willing to wipe entire factions out to make the most from it.

[Drascalicus]

Originally posted by SkollUlfr:

is there anyway to find cargo ships to rob, other than going to gate junction sectors or actively raiding a faction main sector?

In a word: Don't

In many words: Raiding by far was one of the MOST fun and profitable ventures in the game aside from a large fleet of AI mining cruisers. It used to be that certain sectors had mines, and in those mines were mining robots or a very large need for mining robots and other high value goods. That has since changed, and mine sell tabs are no longer a thing (unless it was a bug), which means that true high value goods are even harder to come by with the change that created active conflict zones making continual raiding impossible.

TL;DR: If you want to make money, mine, don't raid.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Drascalicus:

Originally posted by SkollUlfr:

is there anyway to find cargo ships to rob, other than going to gate junction sectors or actively raiding a faction main sector?

In a word: Don't

In many words: Raiding by far was one of the MOST fun and profitable ventures in the game aside from a large fleet of AI mining cruisers. It used to be that certain sectors had mines, and in those mines were mining robots or a very large need for mining robots and other high value goods. That has since changed, and mine sell tabs are no longer a thing (unless it was a bug), which means that true high value goods are even harder to come by with the change that created active conflict zones making continual raiding impossible.

TL;DR: If you want to make money, mine, don't raid.

I mean, I wouldn’t go that far to say you shouldn’t. It’s less lucrative than before, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a viable way to make a lot and fast. It’s as I said above, you just need to be really prepared to make it work.

[SkollUlfr]

was actually trying to avoid destroying certain rare stations because running them myself proved expensive rather than profitable. but fair enough.

if i wipe out a faction, what happens to the gate network? there are several i could wipe out in a few hours, but i find their gates useful for crossing rifts.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by SkollUlfr:

was actually trying to avoid destroying certain rare stations because running them myself proved expensive rather than profitable. but fair enough.

if i wipe out a faction, what happens to the gate network? there are several i could wipe out in a few hours, but i find their gates useful for crossing rifts.

Gates remain behind. You can always scout out the faction to see if there are rare stations you want to avoid breaking. There's also certain goods you only need a handful of in most cases where raiding one faction's worth and having a ship you can store it all on is all you'll ever need.

[Drascalicus]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

I mean, I wouldn’t go that far to say you shouldn’t. It’s less lucrative than before, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a viable way to make a lot and fast. It’s as I said above, you just need to be really prepared to make it work.

First, I only play on insane . . .
I make magnitudes more with my AI mining fleet in a few hours over the entirety of hell that was raiding.I was lucky if a ship carried close to 30k in goods initially. Stations are no better.

Profit margins are guaranteed to be 20% or better with raiding, but you can easily make 40%+ selling processors.