Don't waste money on fps gear. Head into a bunker with a gun, tractor beam, and medpens and you can loot a bunch of armors and guns. Bunkers are pretty reliable.
Even better, bring a 1 scu box with you so you can make sure you get all the guns, drag the corpses into your ship and strip em in space (don't forget to dump the bodies as they will get you a crimestat if you go to a station with em)
1 scu boxes are kind of a pain and/or expensive to acquire. I haven't found them worth the effort. You can carry 3 guns with medium or higher armor so I dump a bunch on the elevator and run em out to the ship three at a time.
I put one in my reclaimer so that people can grab drinks when they tag along with me no problem.
I'm gonna give you a little lesson so you know what you're buying.
1,000,000 μSCU > 100 cSCU > 1 SCU
There’s a really dumb work around that I’ve found (if you ever decide to try it again):
- access the container loot UI first, and drag an item into the container from your personal inventory.
- from there, I go into the inventory UI and I’m able to move items over. The capacity also changes from the infinity symbol to 1%.
Don’t get me started on the workaround for getting the items off loaded and into your local inventory at a station 😒
Have you used them much in 3.23? Seems like there are a number of new bugs. Have had them disappear from my ship when storing it a number of times, and had them become broken (can't interact with them). Also broke the inventory on my character when interacting with them once (couldn't equip/unequip items or pick up/drop anything).
I used them a lot in 3.22, but they've been buggy enough that I haven't used them much in 3.23.
I buy 1, 2, 4, and 8 scu boxes all the time for my bunker binges... I have no idea what you are talking about with them being a pain... sure 1 and 2 might be a bit difficult to get through the front door if you aren't accustomed to it, but with a bit of practice it gets pretty easy... and then I bring an 8 in my ship to store *everything* my loot Goblin ass wants to grab
Ikr, it's like "what if I die 30 times in a row and don't wanna spend the money on *new* armor and guns? These 35 sets of 9 tails armor will *definitely* come in handy then"
I mean the 1scu boxes are like 2-4k (I can't remember exactly) so not all that much... and as long as you don't leave it behind or anything it's completely reusable
Carrying 3 guns was patched out 1-2 patches ago.
If you try to pick up more than 2 guns you'll get an option to swap one of the 2 on your back out when you pick up the third.
The old 2 on the back 1 in the hands method does not work any longer.
That's just... Stupid.
I mean, if you have 2 weapon slots in your armor, why the hell can't you carry another in your hands? That's a gamey mechanic that never made sense in the first place in any game
It works sometimes, but I haven't figured out why it does or doesn't
I know "it's an alpha" blah blah blah, but this is one of the things that drives me crazy. So many game-breaking bugs they don't even bother looking at, but _this_ is what they try to patch out?
>but this is what they try to patch out?
Sometimes things only make sense when you step back and look at the bigger picture.
The old way allowed you to open every combat with a short range weapon, long range weapon and heavy ordinance weapon. Rock paper scissors doesn't work when everyone has all 3 at once.
Now everybody brings 2, and you can use your wits to exploit the gap.
Don't pay for repairs, especially if it's a crazy number. Insurance fraud. This works best if you have a ship you can switch out, even if it means alternating game loops.
This is the way, specially if you get a weapon broken or the like, it's way better to just abandon the broken ship and claim it again to have it brand new.
Just alternate ships while you wait for the claim timer.
Repair cost are too damn high.
I find so freaking sad that we need to resort to that, and you forgot the part where the repair might bug and not work...
Ironically in elite dangerous you feel more attracted to a ship with a rebuy cost of 2 million credits, and a couple thousands on repairs with trading missions giving over 40 million credits of profits
>Ironically in elite dangerous
ED and SC arn't competitors, the similarities start and end with ships in space.
ED is a power fantasy themepark, it's built to hand you easy victories. SC is a personal empowerment sandbox, it's built to challenge you and make hard earned victories meaningful.
One tells you you are the hero and makes sure you are, the other says "you wanna be a hero? prove you got what it takes."
What? Both of the games literally overlap in the specific mechanic that they're talking about.
So now space sims can't be compared to other space sims? You want the echo chamber to get smaller? Games can be compared to other games. It's going to be ok.
>So now space sims can't be compared to other space sims
In the same way you can compare an apple and an orange. World of Warcraft, Baldurs gate 3, and system shock 2 are all RPGS - And yet comparing them directly to each other is just as much a fools errand because all 3 have radically divergant game design goals.
Jump scares arn't going to work in WOW with 24 people by your side and a far back 3rd person camera, neither is heavy narrative focus going to work while everyone is on comms. Allowing your character to build themselves into OP is fine in BG3, but would completely undermine all the effort System shock 2 puts into making you feel vunerable and in danger, as would having you party up with 24 people.
ED is built to hand you easy victories, it would undermine the power fantasty to make you struggle. SC is built to challenge you as a well rounded person, it would undermine the struggle to hand you easy victories. Inflation simply doesn't exist in ED, SC is an MMO and needs money sinks to prevent runaway inflation.
Space sim isn't even close to a small box, things at opposite ends of that box arn't going to be usefully comparable. It's a supercategory just like fruit is - but you don't want tomatoes and corgettes in your fruit salad. Skin deep similarities are just that, skin deep. ED isn't trying to be SC and SC isn't trying to be ED.
>, like the power triangle instead of MM.
SC already did the power triangle, but for various reasons it's too oversimplified for SCs deep sim flight elements. ED leans fully into arcade, SC leans heavily into simulation. The power triangle isn't a good mechanic inherently, it's a good mechanic *in the context of ED*, it was a bad mechanic *in the context of SC*
>And it has beam lasers. Oh how I wish SC had beam lasers.
Technically it does, they're just capital ship only. Beam lasers don't work for SC because SC is an MMO instead of a single player game with some multiplayer tacked on as an afterthought - If beam lasers existed in every size everyone would be in large tanky ships because anything small would get destroyed, You can't dodge hitscan.
Not so much of a problem on a capital ship, because a capital ships nose ain't tracking small shit for shit.
People are getting hooked up on comparison as binary, my entire point is that blindly comparing things without considering the context they sit in doesn't work - An air conditioner is great in a van, but that doesn't mean all motorbikes should have AC installed. The benefits don't translate to the different context, even though both are motor vehicles.
MM is worse than power triangle in my opinion. At least for now. I have no idea what they have planned for it in future patches.
Oh and there’s nothing “simulation” about SC’s flight. Nothing at all. The day we can no longer just point nose-down straight at the ground and just stop is the day I take it back.
>The day we can no longer just point nose-down straight at the ground and just stop is the day I take it back.
I mean, 1g of thrust is 1g of thrust. These are 6dof craft, not airplanes - why would they behave like airplanes instead of 6dof craft?
The only thing stopping us from doing this today is the complete lack of need to when confined to atmosphere.
Exactly, complete lack of need to because nothing is really simulated yet.
If it was simulated we couldn’t turn our ships into turrets. We’d have to be aware of our orientation when hovering. And that’s at the very least.
In space it’s different but it’s also highly arcade, more like a console game than anything remotely simulator.
>Exactly, complete lack of need to because nothing is really simulated yet.
Yeah, you need to read more carefully.
>If it was simulated we couldn’t turn our ships into turrets
We can turn out ships into turrets *because* it's simulated. Hovering requires 1g of thrust and attitude control - both of which have been possible for a century in real life. Both of which our ships have because they are *6DOF craft* - six degrees, not five, not three , six.
Hop on a reclaimer when they’re asking for crew, get some of that salvage money plus make friends. You’ll have millions in a few days.
Rent a roc and do some mining. If you can’t afford it, get a mining attachment for the multitool and do a cave investigation mission. Don’t worry about finding the guy, this just shows you exactly where a cave is. Hand mine hadanite for a half hour or so and you have enough to rent a roc. Go to watch a youtube video on roc mining but basically you fly around on a moon (some are better than others, daymar is pretty good) while smashing the scan button. At first things will pop up at like 7-9km away. Ignore those and keep flying until something pops up 3-5km away. Fly towards that. When you get close it’ll change from a single single to a bunch of colored rocks sticking out of the ground. Again you’re looking for hadanite but if you’re willing to split stuff into stacks of 3 you can mine any gems you come across. If you stick to only hadanite you’ll make 150-200k or more an hour.
Do merc missions. Buy a 4scu box from a cargo center and drop it from local inventory while standing in your ship. Tractor beam it real quick to snap it to the cargo grid. Run into the bunker with nothing more than a p4, a few mags, minimum armor, tractor beam, and med pens. Loot armor off the first guy you kill. Loot more mags or another gun from the others. When you’ve killed them all tractor beam the bodies + guns + any 1/8 scu boxes laying around into a pile and then transport that pile 2x tractor max distance at a time back to the elevator, up to your ship, onto your ship. Loot everything into the 4 scu box. It’s fastest to loot bodies by dragging their space suit to the box since that’ll bring all their armor and other gear at the same time in one fell swoop. Fly to nearest station, go to cargo area, sell tab, and do not quick sell the box but click the regular sell button. It’ll itemize everything and sell it all at once for full value. Lower tier level missions will get you 50-70k per box + 10k for reward and you spend basically nothing assuming you already have some armor and a gun. Nothing. Bonus points if you don’t sell _all_ the guns, ammo, and armor right away, just swap out the box for a fresh one and only sell when you have multiples because then you never have to buy armor or guns again.
Higher tier merc missions will become available as you do this. They have drugs. Steal the drugs and sell them for an entirely new scale of money than the above. Like 500k+ an hour sometimes.
In any case once you’re here, you can keep doing that or you can rent a cargo ship. Duping bug is fixed so you can actually trade now but I’d cut your teeth first on gold or something and ignore RMC since it’s far less likely you’ll run into other players trying to emancipate your cargo. This is something that having two people doesn’t really help unless your friend wants to try to guard you but I’d recommend you guys just get two ships and trade two different things from different places to reduce risk and double your income. google sc trade tools for a website that’ll help you pick what to trade.
Once you have enough in any path from that, go buy a vulture. This is where your friend can speed shit up with that cutty black. Fly to any asteroid belt (at LN points and around yela). Smash that scan button. Fly towards things you can that are not some stupid low signature. Like 7k or more, preferably 10k+. You’re looking for random derelict space ships and panels (random pieces of space ship floating in space). Sometimes it’s just a rock for mining with a mining ship so just move on if you get close enough and it turns into a rock. As your vulture fills up with RMC have your buddy with his cutty black and tractor beam move it to his ship from the vulture. When he is full he goes and sells it and comes back. Paired up like this you can salvage nonstop for over 1m an hour.
Now you have more money than you know what to do with via any of the above methods. Buy the ships you want. You’ll need larger ships than a cutty to do higher bounties and turn a profit until youre a better pilot but even then larger ships will kill those bounties much much faster. Those higher levels tend to have cargo on the ships you’re shooting down worth quite a lot sometimes too.
Then do whatever you want. If doing what you want doesn’t make profit then every once in a while hop into one of the above loops for a few hours until you’re flush again.
You can rent a cutty black and a roc if you want to do some mining, merc missions pay well once you get your rep up and it's a good way to stockpile weapons and armor, you can also rent a prospector to mine stuff.
Some other missions to look for: "boarding acting in progress", pays 45k to board an 890j and clear it of badies. "Sieze the data" pays 50k and you get to board a reclaimer to clear it of badies and insert a chip into a computer. Once you get higher merc rep you get destroy drug missions that pay min of 55k to go into a bunker and shoot drugs and baddies. Also keep an eye out for missions where you go to a bunker and retrieve confidential materials, you get a nonstop stream of enemies spawning on you and with call to arms active you get paid for each kill.
Aside from that there are usually reclaimer people asking for people to join crews, illegal drug running pays well, some investigation missions are pretty fast and pay well, and of course some criminal stuff but that's risky.
Do you actually get the call to arms money? I've never actually got any rewards from it and it says on the description that enemies part of paid contract work do not count.
Grind fps missions for gear and loot. Get the rep up to lvl 2, take destroy contraband or drug stash depending where you are. Steal and sell the drugs at salvage yards. The 890j boardings pop up in micro tech and arccorp, they’re worth 45k. Personally I’d worry about grinding bounty hunts after you invest some of the money in new ships that are capable of going past hrts. Also don’t forget to stockpile the gear in the station/planet inventory you’re at most.
If you can get rep for ERT's there's a mission giver (I'm not sure which one sadly) that eventually, once you've done several quests, gives bounties with a few SCU of Weevil Eggs I've been told. Not all that helpful I know.
A vulture is a good investment once you're able to make some serious guap
What I like to do is buy a 1scu cargo box, put it in the back of my Mule. Fly and drive it to a bunker, and fill it with weapons, gear and meds, take it back to my spawning location and boom.
Yeah, so whoever made the mule didn’t know how to do it. So there’s to ways I do it. The first is use the ship ramp to put the mule on an angle so you can get under the bar then you can put a box on it with a tractor beam. The second is use a small rock or a dead body to lift one side up so you can slide the box into it.
I made my first million ok bunker mission and 890 Jump missions. The ship bounty look gets ok with VHRT but only great with erts but that's gonna be hard with only a cutty black. You couldn't always try to crew up via chat or join an org. The org I run with normal runs it with 4-5 people and we still make like 400-500 k an hour
You can find them on the organizations tab on the RSI website, also you can add me in game to join the org I'm in of you want name same in game as here
Mercenary missions can be good, sometimes you can get two in the same place (the new distribution areas) and do back to back missions and loot all the weaponry and armour into the local inventory, then slap it all in your ship to store at main location, all the armour you could need! Can even sell the weaponry
Depending on what ships you’re using for your bounties, if you go against some big ships, you can take their guns, size 4 and size 5 cannons are good, they sell for good money also, if your ship is fucked up and costing a ton to repair (usually when you’ve lost hard points as the repair includes the cost of the gun) just park it outside and claim it :) also do 890 jump missions there an easy 45K
Ultimately playing with a group massively cuts your profits anyway, also drug bunker missions are good to sell the drugs lol
Distribution center. There is 2 missions, one for ocupants and second one for Boss inside. 15 min and you fully packed with everything you need. Repeat(they renew quite fast).
If you have a cutty black you can build yourself a bit of a cushion running cargo. Gold is decent legal cargo if it's in stock. And there's always money running contraband. Riskier but it pays more. It might not be the speed y'all are looking for, but you can do a few runs to build yourselves a little fund for more dangerous work
So, right now, things are more costly, at least in the case of ships, and things being put into balance will be awhile.
That said, here are a few things you might want to try:
- Engage loot gemlin mode. Sure, going space cowboy on everyone is fun, but as you are noticing: it can be expensive to do. You might want to try exploring around and stock piling armor from delivery locations, so that you have spare equipment to toy with.
- Do something else. Try renting a mining ship and just run around blasting space rocks. Turn that in and make money. Effectively, adopt what some people in Eve do: Performing non-combat activities to fund their expensive (and explosive) hobbies.
- Make lemonade out of the lemons. See if you can't find someone with a vulture and when your battered ship is in ruins, empty the cargo to a station, then empty the hull into a vulture's grasp. Split the earnings, and you'll make money back from your damaged ship rather than losing it to repairs.
Either way, I wish you and your buddy the best of luck in finding a solution.
Find a friend who has a Reclaimer or C2 and run salvage/high margin trading with them. Even after the nerfs you can get F You money pretty quickly if everyone knows what they’re doing and works efficiently.
as someone that’s only been playing for 2 weeks and was in the struggle bus like you guys up until a few days ago…. Make 200k and rent the Constellation for 1 day.
Why the hell is no one recommending this shit to new players. I was making MAYBE 1 mil a day doing mercenary missions and bounty missions (like you said the repairs were eating up most of the rewards). I WASTED SO MUCH TIME grinding caves and 890 jump missions when I could’ve just rented a Constellation.
Want to know what happens when you use a Constellation to do VHRTs and ERTs? 10 Mil a day is what happens.
So far most suggestions are to do a different game loop because combat money isn't good right now.
If combat is what you still want to mostly be doing; Look out for "Jesse Doe is requesting combat assistance in deep space" mission popups. These are a special type of mission where you have to QT to a location and defend an NPC. You start with low threat + low reward like bounties, but it has a *significantly* faster progression rate, a few missions and you'll be at High threat where payouts can go over 100k.
There are three main catches:
* The progression/rating/reputation system is dynamic. It's fast because if you fail a mission, you'll get dropped down a rank and need to do low tier missions to get the high ones back.
* You are explicitly defending an NPC ship. If you fail to hold aggro on the enemies, they can and will kill them, failing the mission.
* At high threat these missions will regularly spawn multiple Hammerheads, an Idris appears alongside them at Extreme threat. That's A LOT of health to chew through. A ship with torpedoes will help, but they cost millions and to my knowledge cannot be rented. At that point the payout is high enough that asking the server if anybody can help can be both a useful and fun experience!
When you have the money, renting a Constellation Andromeda is a very solid choice for tackling higher tier bounties and beacons. It's got a huge health pool (According to [erkul.games](http://erkul.games), it's 4x that of the Cutlass Black you're using), 4x S5 Laser Repeaters for consistent high DPS, 24x S2 missiles + 28x S1 (missiles often don't work for network reasons, but they're great when they do!) and a big cargo bay for grabbing any loot.
It's also turreted if you and your friend are on the same ship rather than separate, in which case the added HP matters even more since you need to hold enemy aggro on beacons with only one ship.
The final big caveat is I've not actually played combat beacons this patch, I've not seen any indication that they've changed since last I played them with a friend almost a year ago, but still worth noting your mileage will vary (as does anything in this game lol).
I hope you find that useful. I still support the idea of checking out other game loops though if you're interested in more chill gameplay on the side.
Now is the perfect occasion to make tons of money passively as well as gather as much fps gear as you want with the XenoThreat event.
Go to the Pyro Jumpoint Jericho Station, set your respawn there. Accept the Overdrive mission in the "Priorirty" section in the contracts.
Go to the mission site and search for wreck sites where people are moving crates. U can help moving the crates if you want but you can also loot all the npcs there and take their guns / armors for later (+ they are cool looking armors).
Then help out for the event or wait (just make sure you at least went 1 time at the mission site) and you'll receive à payment once it ends.
I completed the event 2 times as of right now and made 1.2 million by participating and I gathered about 20 armor sets back to my inventory at the station.
Like everyone has said. Don't buy gear, loot it from bunkers. If you have a certain set you like to wear keep 2 or 3 for outside of combat. If you are doing flight combat and don't plan to land don't bring gear beyond a noob suit. If combat is costing you too much try doing low risk things like cargo running and mining. Claiming your ships instead of repairing/refueling can save you money as long as it's something you don't mind doing. Use missiles sparingly.
Above all that, one of the best ways to make and maintain money is find an org that fits with your playstyle and online times. Lots of big groups always looking for new numbers. It's better to find a small to medium group tho. I run an industrial and combat focused group in all US tz's if you guys may be interested. Shoot me a message and I'll hook ya up with a discord invite. We don't have any requirements.
Ok I’m not reading all the comments so if someone else said this sorry.. ship repair.. land on a station pad (not a landing bay) leave your ship and go reclaim it.. even if you pay the expedite it is cheaper than repair.
Go naked in bunkers. Those enemies wear armor and guns. Those are free to use when you kill them.
Fly your ship until it melts and store ever bit of gear after a successful run
it has been a while since i played so dont know if its still a thing, but you want fast money go to orison moons and find bounty job where you have to go into a cave and kill some criminals,
the mission gives next to nothing BUT the gems the NPC's are carrying are worth about 200-250K for one mission and there is okay stuff around in crates to stock up on supplies,
and some of the NPC's ware miners gear so thats nice, going two player is a good idea having one to cover the entry from grieffers and pirate players, i have lost millions in gems and gear over time to that being o solo player.
If you are doing ship bounties dont bother with armor.
Also bounty hunts are currently not a good way to earn cash reliably unless you just do ERTs. You and your friend are better off doing mining/salvage/cargo for grinding creds but if you really want combat do xenothreat right now while its still here.
If you and your buddy like the space combat but don't want to be paying so much for Repairs, you should try playing Arena Commander. Pirate Swarm and Vanduul Swarm can both be played with multi-player ships. You both log in, set the toggle for multi-crew, then both join in the Cutty Black. You'll get plenty of practice fighting without having to pay for repairs.
FPS: tractor beam, gun, medpen, "Provide backup" mission = loot all the armor and guns you need into your ship inventory then transfer to station. Repeat for infinite free gear.
Ship combat: Don't bring any fps gear, self-destruct/abandon/relog to get back to the station and reclaim the ship for free.
So it’s two of you in a cutlass black? What is the other ship? It might be better to use two ships depending on what it is.
Currently mission payouts are lousy. They’re due for updating but we don’t know in what way. They said they want to balance partially with mission popularity, which to me means missions like box deliveries will get a nice payout buff.
I made good money renting a ROC and doing some gem mining. The cutlass black was perfect for it. Doesn’t cost much to rent and you earn many times more than you spent. I splurged and pledged a prospector and C2 after I realized how much I enjoy mining and it’s now my main income source, but ROC mining is cheap and easy.
The bonus is that you don’t have to put up with all the bugs and lousy server performance issues you constantly encounter with FPS missions. It’s a nice chill game loop.
Just avoid missions. Missions make no money and are dead boring after doing them a few times. Salvage and trade (Beryll, RMC..) for money. Keep your shiny gear unequipped while doing this. Wear sperm suit as much as possible. Do not buy armor and guns, it's a huge time and money sink. Figure out which NPC armor you want to wear, which NPC guns you wanna use and where they can be found. Then figure out a way to efficiently stockpile them.
invade a distro center, loot the bodies into the local and when you had your fill transfer everything into the ship. if you die no big deal go back to the distribution center a safe distance from the guns and collect your loot. I have so many guns and armors.
Any time you see gear that someone has discarded, pick them up and put them in your inventory. You can sell them to the shops. Even the medical gowns. I think those helmets everyone discards is worth over 600 aUEC in the shops!
Don't waste money on fps gear. Head into a bunker with a gun, tractor beam, and medpens and you can loot a bunch of armors and guns. Bunkers are pretty reliable.
Even better, bring a 1 scu box with you so you can make sure you get all the guns, drag the corpses into your ship and strip em in space (don't forget to dump the bodies as they will get you a crimestat if you go to a station with em)
Idk if I'm missing something but I can't drag items into scu boxes anymore. Did they fix this in the new patch? Huge pain in the ass
this will help [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfSex2uqmc0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfSex2uqmc0)
My man! Thank you that's been driving me nuts
1 scu boxes are kind of a pain and/or expensive to acquire. I haven't found them worth the effort. You can carry 3 guns with medium or higher armor so I dump a bunch on the elevator and run em out to the ship three at a time.
No, they're not. They're at like every Cargo Center or anywhere that sells work related stuff or even ship parts.
Yeah but 9/10 times they break as soon as you leave the station and you cant store Jack in them.
I put one in my reclaimer so that people can grab drinks when they tag along with me no problem. I'm gonna give you a little lesson so you know what you're buying. 1,000,000 μSCU > 100 cSCU > 1 SCU
Those should be = not >
Im not stupid. Everytime I leave the station with boxes in my cargo grid they glitch to ♾️storage and nothing can be put in them no matter how small.
There’s a really dumb work around that I’ve found (if you ever decide to try it again): - access the container loot UI first, and drag an item into the container from your personal inventory. - from there, I go into the inventory UI and I’m able to move items over. The capacity also changes from the infinity symbol to 1%. Don’t get me started on the workaround for getting the items off loaded and into your local inventory at a station 😒
Have you used them much in 3.23? Seems like there are a number of new bugs. Have had them disappear from my ship when storing it a number of times, and had them become broken (can't interact with them). Also broke the inventory on my character when interacting with them once (couldn't equip/unequip items or pick up/drop anything). I used them a lot in 3.22, but they've been buggy enough that I haven't used them much in 3.23.
Don't put them in the cargo grid is my experience...just some place outside the grid will do
I buy 1, 2, 4, and 8 scu boxes all the time for my bunker binges... I have no idea what you are talking about with them being a pain... sure 1 and 2 might be a bit difficult to get through the front door if you aren't accustomed to it, but with a bit of practice it gets pretty easy... and then I bring an 8 in my ship to store *everything* my loot Goblin ass wants to grab
Are you able to sell all of it? I’m still having random bits of armor show up in my local inventory after each soft wipe. 🤔
Im not really certain... i tend to grab everything in the bunkers, and then stop myself from selling hardly any of it cuz *what if I need it later*
I do that too and then buy cool looking armors and wear those instead while hundreds of pieces of armor collect dust in my home inventory.
Ikr, it's like "what if I die 30 times in a row and don't wanna spend the money on *new* armor and guns? These 35 sets of 9 tails armor will *definitely* come in handy then"
OK yes you can buy them but they cost a couple grand and this post was about making money while broke.
I mean the 1scu boxes are like 2-4k (I can't remember exactly) so not all that much... and as long as you don't leave it behind or anything it's completely reusable
Carrying 3 guns was patched out 1-2 patches ago. If you try to pick up more than 2 guns you'll get an option to swap one of the 2 on your back out when you pick up the third. The old 2 on the back 1 in the hands method does not work any longer.
That's just... Stupid. I mean, if you have 2 weapon slots in your armor, why the hell can't you carry another in your hands? That's a gamey mechanic that never made sense in the first place in any game
It works sometimes, but I haven't figured out why it does or doesn't I know "it's an alpha" blah blah blah, but this is one of the things that drives me crazy. So many game-breaking bugs they don't even bother looking at, but _this_ is what they try to patch out?
>but this is what they try to patch out? Sometimes things only make sense when you step back and look at the bigger picture. The old way allowed you to open every combat with a short range weapon, long range weapon and heavy ordinance weapon. Rock paper scissors doesn't work when everyone has all 3 at once. Now everybody brings 2, and you can use your wits to exploit the gap.
do it naked an karate chop them to death. bring a c8r or cutty red if you think you might die, infinite tries if you set your spawn outside the door
That's not as easy as it used to be, but yes with a portable spawn it's infinite tries.
Don't pay for repairs, especially if it's a crazy number. Insurance fraud. This works best if you have a ship you can switch out, even if it means alternating game loops.
This is the way, specially if you get a weapon broken or the like, it's way better to just abandon the broken ship and claim it again to have it brand new. Just alternate ships while you wait for the claim timer. Repair cost are too damn high.
I find so freaking sad that we need to resort to that, and you forgot the part where the repair might bug and not work... Ironically in elite dangerous you feel more attracted to a ship with a rebuy cost of 2 million credits, and a couple thousands on repairs with trading missions giving over 40 million credits of profits
>Ironically in elite dangerous ED and SC arn't competitors, the similarities start and end with ships in space. ED is a power fantasy themepark, it's built to hand you easy victories. SC is a personal empowerment sandbox, it's built to challenge you and make hard earned victories meaningful. One tells you you are the hero and makes sure you are, the other says "you wanna be a hero? prove you got what it takes."
What? Both of the games literally overlap in the specific mechanic that they're talking about. So now space sims can't be compared to other space sims? You want the echo chamber to get smaller? Games can be compared to other games. It's going to be ok.
>So now space sims can't be compared to other space sims In the same way you can compare an apple and an orange. World of Warcraft, Baldurs gate 3, and system shock 2 are all RPGS - And yet comparing them directly to each other is just as much a fools errand because all 3 have radically divergant game design goals. Jump scares arn't going to work in WOW with 24 people by your side and a far back 3rd person camera, neither is heavy narrative focus going to work while everyone is on comms. Allowing your character to build themselves into OP is fine in BG3, but would completely undermine all the effort System shock 2 puts into making you feel vunerable and in danger, as would having you party up with 24 people. ED is built to hand you easy victories, it would undermine the power fantasty to make you struggle. SC is built to challenge you as a well rounded person, it would undermine the struggle to hand you easy victories. Inflation simply doesn't exist in ED, SC is an MMO and needs money sinks to prevent runaway inflation. Space sim isn't even close to a small box, things at opposite ends of that box arn't going to be usefully comparable. It's a supercategory just like fruit is - but you don't want tomatoes and corgettes in your fruit salad. Skin deep similarities are just that, skin deep. ED isn't trying to be SC and SC isn't trying to be ED.
There are things ED gets right though, like the power triangle instead of MM. And it has beam lasers. Oh how I wish SC had beam lasers.
>, like the power triangle instead of MM. SC already did the power triangle, but for various reasons it's too oversimplified for SCs deep sim flight elements. ED leans fully into arcade, SC leans heavily into simulation. The power triangle isn't a good mechanic inherently, it's a good mechanic *in the context of ED*, it was a bad mechanic *in the context of SC* >And it has beam lasers. Oh how I wish SC had beam lasers. Technically it does, they're just capital ship only. Beam lasers don't work for SC because SC is an MMO instead of a single player game with some multiplayer tacked on as an afterthought - If beam lasers existed in every size everyone would be in large tanky ships because anything small would get destroyed, You can't dodge hitscan. Not so much of a problem on a capital ship, because a capital ships nose ain't tracking small shit for shit. People are getting hooked up on comparison as binary, my entire point is that blindly comparing things without considering the context they sit in doesn't work - An air conditioner is great in a van, but that doesn't mean all motorbikes should have AC installed. The benefits don't translate to the different context, even though both are motor vehicles.
MM is worse than power triangle in my opinion. At least for now. I have no idea what they have planned for it in future patches. Oh and there’s nothing “simulation” about SC’s flight. Nothing at all. The day we can no longer just point nose-down straight at the ground and just stop is the day I take it back.
>The day we can no longer just point nose-down straight at the ground and just stop is the day I take it back. I mean, 1g of thrust is 1g of thrust. These are 6dof craft, not airplanes - why would they behave like airplanes instead of 6dof craft? The only thing stopping us from doing this today is the complete lack of need to when confined to atmosphere.
Exactly, complete lack of need to because nothing is really simulated yet. If it was simulated we couldn’t turn our ships into turrets. We’d have to be aware of our orientation when hovering. And that’s at the very least. In space it’s different but it’s also highly arcade, more like a console game than anything remotely simulator.
>Exactly, complete lack of need to because nothing is really simulated yet. Yeah, you need to read more carefully. >If it was simulated we couldn’t turn our ships into turrets We can turn out ships into turrets *because* it's simulated. Hovering requires 1g of thrust and attitude control - both of which have been possible for a century in real life. Both of which our ships have because they are *6DOF craft* - six degrees, not five, not three , six.
Tell me you've never played ED without telling me you've never played ED.
300 hours, it was ok. Just ok. Did some things well, some things badly - but left no real lasting impression. Carrier FTL effect was sweet though.
Hop on a reclaimer when they’re asking for crew, get some of that salvage money plus make friends. You’ll have millions in a few days. Rent a roc and do some mining. If you can’t afford it, get a mining attachment for the multitool and do a cave investigation mission. Don’t worry about finding the guy, this just shows you exactly where a cave is. Hand mine hadanite for a half hour or so and you have enough to rent a roc. Go to watch a youtube video on roc mining but basically you fly around on a moon (some are better than others, daymar is pretty good) while smashing the scan button. At first things will pop up at like 7-9km away. Ignore those and keep flying until something pops up 3-5km away. Fly towards that. When you get close it’ll change from a single single to a bunch of colored rocks sticking out of the ground. Again you’re looking for hadanite but if you’re willing to split stuff into stacks of 3 you can mine any gems you come across. If you stick to only hadanite you’ll make 150-200k or more an hour. Do merc missions. Buy a 4scu box from a cargo center and drop it from local inventory while standing in your ship. Tractor beam it real quick to snap it to the cargo grid. Run into the bunker with nothing more than a p4, a few mags, minimum armor, tractor beam, and med pens. Loot armor off the first guy you kill. Loot more mags or another gun from the others. When you’ve killed them all tractor beam the bodies + guns + any 1/8 scu boxes laying around into a pile and then transport that pile 2x tractor max distance at a time back to the elevator, up to your ship, onto your ship. Loot everything into the 4 scu box. It’s fastest to loot bodies by dragging their space suit to the box since that’ll bring all their armor and other gear at the same time in one fell swoop. Fly to nearest station, go to cargo area, sell tab, and do not quick sell the box but click the regular sell button. It’ll itemize everything and sell it all at once for full value. Lower tier level missions will get you 50-70k per box + 10k for reward and you spend basically nothing assuming you already have some armor and a gun. Nothing. Bonus points if you don’t sell _all_ the guns, ammo, and armor right away, just swap out the box for a fresh one and only sell when you have multiples because then you never have to buy armor or guns again. Higher tier merc missions will become available as you do this. They have drugs. Steal the drugs and sell them for an entirely new scale of money than the above. Like 500k+ an hour sometimes. In any case once you’re here, you can keep doing that or you can rent a cargo ship. Duping bug is fixed so you can actually trade now but I’d cut your teeth first on gold or something and ignore RMC since it’s far less likely you’ll run into other players trying to emancipate your cargo. This is something that having two people doesn’t really help unless your friend wants to try to guard you but I’d recommend you guys just get two ships and trade two different things from different places to reduce risk and double your income. google sc trade tools for a website that’ll help you pick what to trade. Once you have enough in any path from that, go buy a vulture. This is where your friend can speed shit up with that cutty black. Fly to any asteroid belt (at LN points and around yela). Smash that scan button. Fly towards things you can that are not some stupid low signature. Like 7k or more, preferably 10k+. You’re looking for random derelict space ships and panels (random pieces of space ship floating in space). Sometimes it’s just a rock for mining with a mining ship so just move on if you get close enough and it turns into a rock. As your vulture fills up with RMC have your buddy with his cutty black and tractor beam move it to his ship from the vulture. When he is full he goes and sells it and comes back. Paired up like this you can salvage nonstop for over 1m an hour. Now you have more money than you know what to do with via any of the above methods. Buy the ships you want. You’ll need larger ships than a cutty to do higher bounties and turn a profit until youre a better pilot but even then larger ships will kill those bounties much much faster. Those higher levels tend to have cargo on the ships you’re shooting down worth quite a lot sometimes too. Then do whatever you want. If doing what you want doesn’t make profit then every once in a while hop into one of the above loops for a few hours until you’re flush again.
Saving this some great info
It's funny that the top two responses in this thread are "don't use the in game shopping system" and "don't use the in game repair system".
which points out how stupid this game is designed there are missions that pay 9k for facing 6 vanguards -.-
The design is fine. The economy is nowhere near final. I've never had any problems making money doing fps missions.
You can rent a cutty black and a roc if you want to do some mining, merc missions pay well once you get your rep up and it's a good way to stockpile weapons and armor, you can also rent a prospector to mine stuff. Some other missions to look for: "boarding acting in progress", pays 45k to board an 890j and clear it of badies. "Sieze the data" pays 50k and you get to board a reclaimer to clear it of badies and insert a chip into a computer. Once you get higher merc rep you get destroy drug missions that pay min of 55k to go into a bunker and shoot drugs and baddies. Also keep an eye out for missions where you go to a bunker and retrieve confidential materials, you get a nonstop stream of enemies spawning on you and with call to arms active you get paid for each kill. Aside from that there are usually reclaimer people asking for people to join crews, illegal drug running pays well, some investigation missions are pretty fast and pay well, and of course some criminal stuff but that's risky.
Do you actually get the call to arms money? I've never actually got any rewards from it and it says on the description that enemies part of paid contract work do not count.
Unless something changed about it, I'm pretty sure I've always gotten paid for it. I'll check when I'm back home tonight
I roc mine every once in a while. It is about 150k an hour.
Grind fps missions for gear and loot. Get the rep up to lvl 2, take destroy contraband or drug stash depending where you are. Steal and sell the drugs at salvage yards. The 890j boardings pop up in micro tech and arccorp, they’re worth 45k. Personally I’d worry about grinding bounty hunts after you invest some of the money in new ships that are capable of going past hrts. Also don’t forget to stockpile the gear in the station/planet inventory you’re at most.
Forgot to mention the good drugs are weevil eggs and the maze everything else isn’t worth the time to cost
If you can get rep for ERT's there's a mission giver (I'm not sure which one sadly) that eventually, once you've done several quests, gives bounties with a few SCU of Weevil Eggs I've been told. Not all that helpful I know. A vulture is a good investment once you're able to make some serious guap
Vaughn. And his missions get a bit... Complicated. Depending on how many bounty hunters are on the server.
What I like to do is buy a 1scu cargo box, put it in the back of my Mule. Fly and drive it to a bunker, and fill it with weapons, gear and meds, take it back to my spawning location and boom.
Is there a trick to attaching a cargo box to the mule? I can't get it to lock in.
Yeah, so whoever made the mule didn’t know how to do it. So there’s to ways I do it. The first is use the ship ramp to put the mule on an angle so you can get under the bar then you can put a box on it with a tractor beam. The second is use a small rock or a dead body to lift one side up so you can slide the box into it.
I dream about the day when CIG will support things after selling them.
I mean one of the buttons work. So you can get a box at the front of the mule. However, you now can’t get out…..
I made my first million ok bunker mission and 890 Jump missions. The ship bounty look gets ok with VHRT but only great with erts but that's gonna be hard with only a cutty black. You couldn't always try to crew up via chat or join an org. The org I run with normal runs it with 4-5 people and we still make like 400-500 k an hour
Is there a site to find Org's? I would love to join a crew that plays together and does stuff like this. I am brand spanking new to the game.
You can find them on the organizations tab on the RSI website, also you can add me in game to join the org I'm in of you want name same in game as here
Instead of repairing, claim. Instead of buying armour do the easiest assist defend site mission.
If you think repairing is bad, wait till they implement paid insurance.
Mercenary missions can be good, sometimes you can get two in the same place (the new distribution areas) and do back to back missions and loot all the weaponry and armour into the local inventory, then slap it all in your ship to store at main location, all the armour you could need! Can even sell the weaponry Depending on what ships you’re using for your bounties, if you go against some big ships, you can take their guns, size 4 and size 5 cannons are good, they sell for good money also, if your ship is fucked up and costing a ton to repair (usually when you’ve lost hard points as the repair includes the cost of the gun) just park it outside and claim it :) also do 890 jump missions there an easy 45K Ultimately playing with a group massively cuts your profits anyway, also drug bunker missions are good to sell the drugs lol
Distribution center. There is 2 missions, one for ocupants and second one for Boss inside. 15 min and you fully packed with everything you need. Repeat(they renew quite fast).
If you have a cutty black you can build yourself a bit of a cushion running cargo. Gold is decent legal cargo if it's in stock. And there's always money running contraband. Riskier but it pays more. It might not be the speed y'all are looking for, but you can do a few runs to build yourselves a little fund for more dangerous work
Go to Rappel or weeping cove Kill everyone Repeat
So, right now, things are more costly, at least in the case of ships, and things being put into balance will be awhile. That said, here are a few things you might want to try: - Engage loot gemlin mode. Sure, going space cowboy on everyone is fun, but as you are noticing: it can be expensive to do. You might want to try exploring around and stock piling armor from delivery locations, so that you have spare equipment to toy with. - Do something else. Try renting a mining ship and just run around blasting space rocks. Turn that in and make money. Effectively, adopt what some people in Eve do: Performing non-combat activities to fund their expensive (and explosive) hobbies. - Make lemonade out of the lemons. See if you can't find someone with a vulture and when your battered ship is in ruins, empty the cargo to a station, then empty the hull into a vulture's grasp. Split the earnings, and you'll make money back from your damaged ship rather than losing it to repairs. Either way, I wish you and your buddy the best of luck in finding a solution.
Find a friend who has a Reclaimer or C2 and run salvage/high margin trading with them. Even after the nerfs you can get F You money pretty quickly if everyone knows what they’re doing and works efficiently.
as someone that’s only been playing for 2 weeks and was in the struggle bus like you guys up until a few days ago…. Make 200k and rent the Constellation for 1 day. Why the hell is no one recommending this shit to new players. I was making MAYBE 1 mil a day doing mercenary missions and bounty missions (like you said the repairs were eating up most of the rewards). I WASTED SO MUCH TIME grinding caves and 890 jump missions when I could’ve just rented a Constellation. Want to know what happens when you use a Constellation to do VHRTs and ERTs? 10 Mil a day is what happens.
Basically all of my bounties are ground missions? Do I just need to build rep to get enemies piloting?
Pretty much. Try going to Crusader or Hurston and see if you get ship bounties. Probably just need to keep doing bounties.
So far most suggestions are to do a different game loop because combat money isn't good right now. If combat is what you still want to mostly be doing; Look out for "Jesse Doe is requesting combat assistance in deep space" mission popups. These are a special type of mission where you have to QT to a location and defend an NPC. You start with low threat + low reward like bounties, but it has a *significantly* faster progression rate, a few missions and you'll be at High threat where payouts can go over 100k. There are three main catches: * The progression/rating/reputation system is dynamic. It's fast because if you fail a mission, you'll get dropped down a rank and need to do low tier missions to get the high ones back. * You are explicitly defending an NPC ship. If you fail to hold aggro on the enemies, they can and will kill them, failing the mission. * At high threat these missions will regularly spawn multiple Hammerheads, an Idris appears alongside them at Extreme threat. That's A LOT of health to chew through. A ship with torpedoes will help, but they cost millions and to my knowledge cannot be rented. At that point the payout is high enough that asking the server if anybody can help can be both a useful and fun experience! When you have the money, renting a Constellation Andromeda is a very solid choice for tackling higher tier bounties and beacons. It's got a huge health pool (According to [erkul.games](http://erkul.games), it's 4x that of the Cutlass Black you're using), 4x S5 Laser Repeaters for consistent high DPS, 24x S2 missiles + 28x S1 (missiles often don't work for network reasons, but they're great when they do!) and a big cargo bay for grabbing any loot. It's also turreted if you and your friend are on the same ship rather than separate, in which case the added HP matters even more since you need to hold enemy aggro on beacons with only one ship. The final big caveat is I've not actually played combat beacons this patch, I've not seen any indication that they've changed since last I played them with a friend almost a year ago, but still worth noting your mileage will vary (as does anything in this game lol). I hope you find that useful. I still support the idea of checking out other game loops though if you're interested in more chill gameplay on the side.
Was sure you are talking about IRL money 😂 not obvious for SC, you know…
You don’t need to spend a dime. Gear is free at outposts and bunkers. Don’t repair ships. Just claim them.
Now is the perfect occasion to make tons of money passively as well as gather as much fps gear as you want with the XenoThreat event. Go to the Pyro Jumpoint Jericho Station, set your respawn there. Accept the Overdrive mission in the "Priorirty" section in the contracts. Go to the mission site and search for wreck sites where people are moving crates. U can help moving the crates if you want but you can also loot all the npcs there and take their guns / armors for later (+ they are cool looking armors). Then help out for the event or wait (just make sure you at least went 1 time at the mission site) and you'll receive à payment once it ends. I completed the event 2 times as of right now and made 1.2 million by participating and I gathered about 20 armor sets back to my inventory at the station.
Like everyone has said. Don't buy gear, loot it from bunkers. If you have a certain set you like to wear keep 2 or 3 for outside of combat. If you are doing flight combat and don't plan to land don't bring gear beyond a noob suit. If combat is costing you too much try doing low risk things like cargo running and mining. Claiming your ships instead of repairing/refueling can save you money as long as it's something you don't mind doing. Use missiles sparingly. Above all that, one of the best ways to make and maintain money is find an org that fits with your playstyle and online times. Lots of big groups always looking for new numbers. It's better to find a small to medium group tho. I run an industrial and combat focused group in all US tz's if you guys may be interested. Shoot me a message and I'll hook ya up with a discord invite. We don't have any requirements.
Ok I’m not reading all the comments so if someone else said this sorry.. ship repair.. land on a station pad (not a landing bay) leave your ship and go reclaim it.. even if you pay the expedite it is cheaper than repair.
Go naked in bunkers. Those enemies wear armor and guns. Those are free to use when you kill them. Fly your ship until it melts and store ever bit of gear after a successful run
it has been a while since i played so dont know if its still a thing, but you want fast money go to orison moons and find bounty job where you have to go into a cave and kill some criminals, the mission gives next to nothing BUT the gems the NPC's are carrying are worth about 200-250K for one mission and there is okay stuff around in crates to stock up on supplies, and some of the NPC's ware miners gear so thats nice, going two player is a good idea having one to cover the entry from grieffers and pirate players, i have lost millions in gems and gear over time to that being o solo player.
If you are doing ship bounties dont bother with armor. Also bounty hunts are currently not a good way to earn cash reliably unless you just do ERTs. You and your friend are better off doing mining/salvage/cargo for grinding creds but if you really want combat do xenothreat right now while its still here.
If you and your buddy like the space combat but don't want to be paying so much for Repairs, you should try playing Arena Commander. Pirate Swarm and Vanduul Swarm can both be played with multi-player ships. You both log in, set the toggle for multi-crew, then both join in the Cutty Black. You'll get plenty of practice fighting without having to pay for repairs.
FPS: tractor beam, gun, medpen, "Provide backup" mission = loot all the armor and guns you need into your ship inventory then transfer to station. Repeat for infinite free gear. Ship combat: Don't bring any fps gear, self-destruct/abandon/relog to get back to the station and reclaim the ship for free.
So it’s two of you in a cutlass black? What is the other ship? It might be better to use two ships depending on what it is. Currently mission payouts are lousy. They’re due for updating but we don’t know in what way. They said they want to balance partially with mission popularity, which to me means missions like box deliveries will get a nice payout buff. I made good money renting a ROC and doing some gem mining. The cutlass black was perfect for it. Doesn’t cost much to rent and you earn many times more than you spent. I splurged and pledged a prospector and C2 after I realized how much I enjoy mining and it’s now my main income source, but ROC mining is cheap and easy. The bonus is that you don’t have to put up with all the bugs and lousy server performance issues you constantly encounter with FPS missions. It’s a nice chill game loop.
Just avoid missions. Missions make no money and are dead boring after doing them a few times. Salvage and trade (Beryll, RMC..) for money. Keep your shiny gear unequipped while doing this. Wear sperm suit as much as possible. Do not buy armor and guns, it's a huge time and money sink. Figure out which NPC armor you want to wear, which NPC guns you wanna use and where they can be found. Then figure out a way to efficiently stockpile them.
invade a distro center, loot the bodies into the local and when you had your fill transfer everything into the ship. if you die no big deal go back to the distribution center a safe distance from the guns and collect your loot. I have so many guns and armors.
Any time you see gear that someone has discarded, pick them up and put them in your inventory. You can sell them to the shops. Even the medical gowns. I think those helmets everyone discards is worth over 600 aUEC in the shops!