AgentNine's NIC Making Guide

New to the game and want to learn how to make a ton of in game money fast? Well here's step by step guide.

Intro

Now assuming you've just finished the tutorial and haven't read Zortarg's guide, I will show you where to start. First off, DO NOT PUT EP INTO ANYTHING YET! This is very important because a lot of planning early on will save you time later on. Also, if you haven't joined a mega-corp yet, pick the one with a bonus to industry bots. If you already picked one that didn't have a bonus, it's fine.

So now what?

Pick a Faction and check out your bots

As you finish the tutorial, you'll be given 3 bots. Based on the faction you choose, you will start with the 1 Syndicate bot and 2 small bots from your faction. Since I liked the Pelistals, I chose that type as my starting faction which means I began the game with the Arkhe, Castel, and Waspish bots.

Spend EP to use the best starting bot for now

Because you can't use your 3rd bot yet, you need to put EP into (your faction's name) bot control. For example, since I chose Pelistal, I would get my Pelistal Robot Control up to rank 4, basic robotics to rank 4, and combat robot specialist to rank 1. By doing this, we've leveled the required skills to pilot the starting robot with the most storage out of the three. Next, and this step is important, activate your bot! You need to be using the bot with the most cargo space because you will haul many things and having more storage saves you a trip.

Plan ahead

Next is getting your skills set up for level 2 assignments. "why now? I can only do level 0 or 1 missions." Well. the sooner you get these skills, the sooner you'll know what ep you have left over to use for whatever. Also, if you spend all your ep on combat stuff you won't have any to put towards piloting an industry bot.



Because Sequers hold more than most other bots, they are perfect for transporting and are more or less required for Level 2 missions. The sooner you get a sequer, the better but remember you need to have the required skills learned before you can pilot it which is why I said earlier not to spend EP until now. Sequers need about 3,840 EP in skills. This is broken down into:

[+] Robot Control

> Basic Robotics / Rank 4 = 1200 EP (total spent)
> Industrial Robot Control / Rank 4 = 2160 EP (total spent)
> Industrial Robot Specialist / Rank 1 = 480 EP (total spent)
DONT GO ANY HIGHER THAN THIS You don't need more ranks in these for the Sequer

Now these next two skills I'd highly recommend that you get:

[+]Relations

> Contract negotiation / Rank (MAX) <- Multiplies the bonus multiplier you get from running assignments. You will really see the difference after you run 5 transport missions
> Transportation specialization / Rank (MAX) <- This the other great skill you get +2% rep gain per rank and more NIC per mission before the bonus is applied.

Now these skills are out of the way, you can either wait til after the guide to spend the rest of your EP or go ahead and pick up whatever else you want to focus on (combat/production/etc).

To help, I made this chart that shows the skills (in order of complexity) by rank and cost per level so you may find it helpful when thinking about planning you next skills

Now that you've got the required skills set, it's time to save some NIC to buy the sequer. Right now they cost around 1.2million NIC which sounds like a lot but once you get moving, it'll happen sooner than you'd expect....

Make that NIC!

Now to start questing taking assignments

Now if you remember from the tutorial, the Assignments button on the top right is where you accept missions. This will become very familiar to you after awhile because you will be doing nothing but transport missions for some time. Don't worry though, transport missions are the best/easiest way to make money very quickly.


So go ahead and grab the Level 1 transport mission and then hit the deploy button to leave the terminal. I should mention now that the more you do missions you will gain a bonus (up to ^5) so you will want to keep running them repeatedly. Also, keep in mind that not all missions pay the same. This is because the amount is based on how many nodes there are (the red circles A,B,C,D) which means more = better. I should mention that you get more NIC from missions on harder (PVP) islands but you can make plenty from the safety of Alpha2 islands without the risk.

Here's a Level 3 mission with 6 objective nodes. Look at that payout:

Gotta go fast!

Once you get the NIC to buy one, get a lightweight frame. Because there aren't any skills to make you go faster, equipping the highest grade (T1, T2, etc) frame will boost your top speed thus allowing you to complete missions faster.

Late/end game hauling

Once you hit the Level 3 transport missions you'll be making close to (or more than) 1 million NIC each run with 6 nodes depending on how much EP you spent into the Relations skills. Also, you will probably notice you won't have enough room to carry everything at once for some of these missions.



The Lithus (above) and Scarab(not shown) are the two heavy duty bots used for hauling things late game. The only downside to them is that they have low armor(health) and they are very (well over 100mil) expensive, but they can carry up to 240 units which is the highest amount in the game.

For piloting a Lithus, you need the following skills/ranks:

[+] Robot Control

> Advanced Robotics / Rank 4 = 4,200 EP (total spent)
> Basic Robotics / Rank 4 = 3,000 EP (total spent) <-- you should have this already
> Industrial Robot Control / Rank 8 =43,200 EP (total spent) <-- +4 ranks (37,800 EPmore than Sequer requirement)
> Industrial Robot Specialist / Rank 1 = 480 EP (total spent) <-- you should have this already

I won't post the requirements for the Sacrab, but they are a bit different than the ones from Lithus because the scarab can fly(read:glide)

TL;DR

If you really want the short version, here it is:

1. Put EP into Sequer requirements
   
2. Max Transportation specialist and Contract Negotiation
   
3. Run transport missions in low tier bot
   
4. Buy/use lightweight frame to go faster/do mission faster
   
5. Buy/equip a Sequer for doing Level 2 missions
   
6. Run more transportation missions (start printing NIC)
   
7. Learn requirements for Lithus or Scarab
   
8. Buy Lithus or Scarab
   
9. Run more transportation missions
   
10. Print ALL THE NIC

[HEX: SOLO QUEUE]

This is the 2nd half of the comment below:

The fastest and easiest way to get the EP would be to spend the extra money on the DLC and get 300K EP up front with enough credits for 3 more months of 50% bonus sub time. They're well worth it with 2 of the best sparks in the game and without all the grinding to unlock them. I linked this game to Steam from my youngest account. I'm an on again/off again vet with far more play time that is reflected here.

This game has the best PvP in gaming and really if you have 0 interest in PvP or supporting PvP in any way you should steer clear because the rest, while it has it's interesting aspects, is ultimately entirely in the service of PvP. In other words, you don't need the money if you're not going to use it.

[HEX: SOLO QUEUE]

Eh... transport is okay for semi-afk autopiloting. Harvesting is where the money's at currently. Not because they pay well but because they're fast. You also need that relation rep for buying certain things from Syndicate and much more importantly the production bonuses (more lines/marterial efficiency, etc).

There aren't any skills to make you go faster because there used to be and it was #1 required to level first to the point where *everyone* had lvl 10 in speed and vets finally convinced the developers that it was so important everyone should just start maxed out and they removed the extension from the game and refunded the EP.

[Strategy Player]

"I should mention now that the more you do missions you will gain a bonus (up to ^5) so you will want to keep running them repeatedly." yep that is what you had. I just thought it was worth mentioning that once you are at 5 in a row for the same day and time the 6th one and more get you the most money. Some might read that once you hit 5 it stays that way which is not entirely correct because the bonuses drop off over time.
Now you can start work on that other guide we talked about, the repair refine and production value of every main terminal in the game. :)

[Redheat]

Thanks for the comment @Strategy Player. I think I did briefly mention it under the "Make that NIC!" section (2nd paragraph) and I agree that people should know this. I plan on adding more images later to help show people what I'm talking about.

[Strategy Player]

Good game buddy, might also add that once you hit 5 missions in a row you max out the bonus so try to plan a time in real life you can set aside the free time to play for a while to get to mission 5 and then run as many additional missions as you can within your play time.