Industry Nothing pays better..

[Starscribe]

I enjoy the mining mechanic in this game, and I've reached an age and a mindset where industry mechanics interest me more than pew pew, largely (probably means I'm slowing down!).

That said, and I know it's early days, nothing in this game seems to me to make money as fast nor as regularly as mining. And I've tried a bit of everything. The only possible exception might be sitting in a ship full of torpedoes taking out player bounties from distance. Mining regularly gets me 50-100k and I can Netflix (though not chill) at the same time.

Claim jumper missions give you 10K. Cargo hauling carries too much risk. Seems like other areas of the game ought to reward a little better?

Is mining your go to money generator? If not, what is? Can anything beat it? And yes, I know the game isn't finished yet .

 

[Lorddarthvik]

I enjoy the mining mechanic in this game, and I've reached an age and a mindset where industry mechanics interest me more than pew pew, largely (probably means I'm slowing down!).

That said, and I know it's early days, nothing in this game seems to me to make money as fast nor as regularly as mining. And I've tried a bit of everything. The only possible exception might be sitting in a ship full of torpedoes taking out player bounties from distance. Mining regularly gets me 50-100k and I can Netflix (though not chill) at the same time.

Claim jumper missions give you 10K. Cargo hauling carries too much risk. Seems like other areas of the game ought to reward a little better?

Is mining your go to money generator? If not, what is? Can anything beat it? And yes, I know the game isn't finished yet .

Mining seems to be your best bet!

As I dont have a mining ship:
Area18 space to New Cabbage, box running FTL missions. You can pick up 3-4 sometimes even more that have the same pickup location or at least they are close by.
Yesterday I did a run of Area18 to Baijin point, picked up 1 package there, then on to Cellin (I think? one of the moons anyways) that had 3 packages waiting from the same location!
Took about 30-40 minutes all in all to get to New Babbage and distribue the packs on rooftops there, and I was using a stock QT drive Aurora MR. If you have anything with the range and better speed, it's even more worth it. (stock Aurora almost runs out of QT fuel by the time it gets there)
That was 4x8200aUEC for a very leisurely flight.
pros:
-if you wanna watch some shows or whatever while "progressing" in the game, it's pretty good money and super easy, you also have lots of transit time to grab a bite and such
Cons:
- box vending machines break often, and might not give out the packages, or not accept them, or the delivery points to some random location 50meters below the actual vending machine and you can't deliver. That's when it's just a waste of time.
- with this route, there are usually no missions taking you back to Area18. New Cabbage basically lacks any worthwhile missions, so if you want to do this again, your best bet is to Not land there at the space port, and just suicide to spawn back at Area18. It's important to get missions that make you deliver to rooftops instead of the spaceport if you wish to do it this way!

edit:
- I don't do bounty missions cos the bounties regularly doN't spawn.
- claim jumpers are too hard for my small ships, and the damage and ammo cost is prohibitive. Or you can just re-claim your damaged ship, but that's time wasted
- "listening in" type of spy sat hunts are bugged and don't spawn at the moment, also too much risk with the timer
- patrol missions are fun, easy with the right ship, and pay pretty well, but again, the timer can be limiting if your map is bugged and you can't QT in-system to the points.
- on-foot bounty missions are fun but the AI is derpy and lags like hell, you can easily get killed by them if they lag out. too much risk and time spent flying and walking
- underground searches for bodies are buggy at best, and can take ages, especially if you get lost lol
- wreck search missions can take ages/not register/not spawn and so on. Too bugged to be worth it imo

 

[Stormfeather85]

I just started a week ago - I'm working my way up towards a single-person mining ship. I'm doing those UPS/Amazon delivery missions mentioned above. My favorite route is from Crusader (pick up missions one planet at a time - Daymar, Cellin, Yela) all to New Cabbage. The only pickup spot I've had trouble with is that dang Reyari Lab on Cellin, which says the pickup is below the floor (I reported it). All the missions are 6110aUEC and up to like 8200ish. I take 10-11 at a time in my Avenger ship. Like I said though, I pick up a few for one of those planets, head there, then check again since sometimes there will be additional duplicates at the same planet/locations before heading to the next planet. Also helps keep boxes in order in case the system goes wonky and doesn't tell you which box is for what mission. Heard there have been issues with mining, so I'm just stackin the sweet digital dollars for a Prospector ship in the mean time.

Tried FPS mining, the time invested (including finding your way back out of the damn caves) for the return isn't worth it.

Tried cargo hauling, ended up losing the whole load at Port Olisar (totally buggy atm, avoid at all costs) and had to claim it after stopping at multiple other points trying to offload it little by little since you can't really sell the whole shipload at once it seems.

I suck at space bounties and those claim jumper things - I did okay on the "rescue the ship from invaders" mission until I got onto the ship and my gun wouldn't fire and they shot me once and I died lol. I'll stick to my Space Postal Service for now, looking forward to asteroid mining though!

 

[Michael]

50 - 100 k per hour? per run?

I made a trading statistics in 3.7. After gathering enough capital i could easily make 200-300k Uec per hour with the caterpiller.
(Also there is definitly a risk of loosing a lot of money ofc.)

If you want to play it safe 75K UEC/h with scrap is doable. And thats just fly to location A buy, fly to location B sell.

Mining and trading profits will most likely change with implementation of quantas. And i assume the more "chill" it is, the less profit it will give.

 

[Stormfeather85]

I just watched one video before I tried the commodities trading (I got a ton of medical supplies) but the ports would only buy some at a time or none at all.

Is scrap able to sell the whole ship-load at once? Would be nice to be able to offload the whole cargo haul at once since my single-box delivery route takes me 2 hours ish and I make like 70-80k.

 

[Black Sunder]

Scrap sells very well all at once usually. Medical Supplies, once a staple of hauling just don't happen unless you're doing 200 units or less at most places.

~5 days so far and 3 mill made as a group so far: https://testsquadron.com/threads/goals-we-got-em-week-1-3-mil-reached-higher-and-higher.17484/

 

[BUTUZ]

It's not just about the money, it's about the financial risk.

Mining is one of the best money makers in the game because it is risk free. You risk nothing to do it, and you may comeback home with 20k, 50k, 90k, more?!!

Trading is the best money earner in the game but it is very high risk. You lose that cat full of titanium? Say goodbye to at least half a mil.

Combat is not too bad, can easily earn 100k per hour. Again, zero financial risk.

Box missions are good for beginners to get some dollar.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

So today I tried a timed run of my route I described above, but this time I only found 4 missions that were worth it for 8200aUEC each.
- Area18 to New Babbage
- ship used was a stock base Freelancer, the one provided by CiG
- all boxes were picked up on different sites, 2 boxes per moon.
- The sites were always on the opposite side of the moon so I had to travel in and out of atmo and qt around (single jump) per pickup
- I tried to travel as fast as possible while out of quantum, doing full burns towards the landing sites and breaking with 180 full burns and shit... it was fun and I almost did a TESTy on my first approach but I managed to pull up a few meters from the ground. Btw, did you know that you can combat-land the Freelancer, slam it down at speed, like it had wheels but instead it just skids for a couple of meters? very useful when you're in a hurry.
- there were no interruptions while traveling. No fuel stops, no police, no pirates, no crashes, no players either...
- all boxes were delivered on different rooftops on New Babbage, again, with max speed I could manage out of that bucket. Due to the way Microtech atmo works, that basically means SCM top speed at most

The whole thing took me 54 minutes from starting to accept missions in my ship inside the hangar on Area18 to the last "mission complete" text popping up

That roughly translates to 32,800 aUEC Per Hour in this case for 4 boxes.
Not great, but basically risk free and good for starting out. A few runs like that and you can easily outfit a starter Aurora with better guns and parts that makes it viable for bounty missions.

I tried an hour of bounty hunting in the Crusader zone using the Freelancer. It didn't pay as well, only made around 25K and about halfway in, I got ganked by a tier4 bounty group I think. It was like 8 ships, with at least one connie? I dunno, it was at Grim Hex and I died pretty soon after erasing the Connie and 2 smaller ships.
tier 1-2 seems to be the most worth it with time to kill vs time to travel and risk of damage imo, especially when they are that close to each other around Yela.


Question to you more experienced bunch:
How much does it take to get into trade runs that pay better than the above method using a base Freelancer? Any good routes I should risk?

 

[BUTUZ]

TBH if you want to keep it risk free you can earn 50+k per hour doing the destroy mining satellite claim missions @ 10k each or 15k each if you want to be naughty. Freelance great ship for that! 4 x S3 gimbal boomboom cannons and quite few boomboom missiles to make the miners go BOOM BOOM!

 

[Starscribe]

TBH if you want to keep it risk free you can earn 50+k per hour doing the destroy mining satellite claim missions @ 10k each or 15k each if you want to be naughty. Freelance great ship for that! 4 x S3 gimbal boomboom cannons and quite few boomboom missiles to make the miners go BOOM BOOM!

Tried this. Easy money in the MIS though stay ballistic and you'll be restocking every 2-3 missions. Still makes about half as much as me spending the same time mining. Think they should bump up the combat rewards.

 

[Black Sunder]

Tried this. Easy money in the MIS though stay ballistic and you'll be restocking every 2-3 missions. Still makes about half as much as me spending the same time mining. Think they should bump up the combat rewards.

Mining is hit and miss though, often times with alot of searching involved. You're not going to find Quantanium every trip unless you're willing to trawl the lands for hours.

 

[Starscribe]

Mining is hit and miss though, often times with alot of searching involved. You're not going to find Quantanium every trip unless you're willing to trawl the lands for hours.

Indeed - but you don't need to. I can make 50-90k in 30 mins or so without ever finding it, if I do it's a bonus. I think I posted one such run in the mining thread.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

Indeed - but you don't need to. I can make 50-90k in 30 mins or so without ever finding it, if I do it's a bonus. I think I posted one such run in the mining thread.

Guess I'll be checking out the Mining guide and renting a Prospector then.

 

[Talonsbane]

Personally, I dabble a little in the box delivery missions & a bit more in the Cargo hauling runs, but I keep it simple since I don't have millions to risk. I just take a ship to an R&R, purchase about 1/2 of what I have in scrap, then take it to the closest place that accepts that to sell. It's not a fast way to rack up the UEC, but I haven't had a lot of 30k issues doing it either. I look at it a bit like digitally going fishing & enjoying the scenery of the Verse.

 

[Hammer]

Sorry to necro-post, but coming back to the game at about the same time CIG returned the economy to the way it was before, I'm now looking for alternatives to Laranite for cash grinding. I'll try box missions but I hate them so much. I often get glitched and with my limited time, that tends to waste my session.

I'm getting into mining right now. i've had a little luck in caves, but I suspect that's more because I'm being patient and using the time to relax after work, so the mining is a bonus. no risk, and I get to have fun with a shooty shooty mining lazor.

 

[Cugino83]

Actually mining is the best way to gring money: no risk, no particular skill required and if you go FPS mining no big ship required.

If you go FPS consider buying one of the Caldera armor (the big chunking enviromental suite): not only they provide an enviromental protection form cold or hot climate, but also have an increased cargo capacity, and that mean more cristal to pick up and so more cash.

Personally I'm looking forward ot the ROCK: being able to use the Cutlass or the incoming StarRunner for moving around while mining is really a morea appealing choice over the flying turd that is the Prospector and if the proportion will be correct, FPS mining will be way more profitable then ship mining by a factor of 10x or more (not considering the refinery gameplay...)

 

[Hammer]

It's certainly lower risk. I'm using the "rucksack" chest piece right now which I think gives me 2 extra SCUs of space. Where do I find the Caldera armour?

 

[Cugino83]

The Rucksuck chest provide you like 120unites (Kg???) of trasport capacity, translated in SCU, since you can dump all the personal inventory into a single box, I think is <0.33 SCU...
Caldera armor has a bit more of capacity (150 unites if I remember correctly....)....

You can find it in two landing zone:
Loreville -> hight temprature protection (dark red color)
New Babbeg -> lower temprature protection (yellow color)

Keep in mind that the complete suite (armor + helmet) cost about 15k, it count like an heavy armor but is equipped like a jumpsuite (so don't do that in a non-breatable atmophere...)

 

[Hammer]

Oh okay, thanks! I don't know if 30 units difference is worth the cost... not as low cash as I am right now.

 

[Cugino83]

Well, my everage FPS mining, with just a rucksack complete, is around 18-20k per run and without being too picky about what to mine (be it Adanite, Dolevine or Hedanite, I pick them all...), so basically this will repay itself in 1 single run.
Plus the addedd protection against damage and eviromental hazzard compared to the light armor Rucksack core...


EDIT:
please note that since release of the 3.10 Enviromental suite (Pembroke and Novitok) are bugged and present 0 unites of personal inventory, so they are nice to hang around in the extreme climate, but not for mining.
Also note that the standard rucksack armor has like 300 unite of space instead of 80...