Malus Darrow wrote: Bloodbeak wrote: I started again. There is no coming back from Pluto. Well there is but ... you know. What are you guys trading (and where) to make a profit? The only thing I've made a profit from is carbon, but it is going to take forever to pay that slimy dude back by only trading carbon... For now, I am looking at running Copper from Mars to the Moon (16 credit profit per unit), and then coffee from Earth back to Mars (105 credit profit per unit). Those two take up just 1 unit of cargo space per item... keeps the math simple.

Hell yeah! This goon will be paid back pretty quickly. Thanks for the tip!

reefershark wrote: Ok so I flew to Jupiter to run my messages, and all I can do is mine - I can't seem to find or land on Jupiter station? Anyone?

Some of the planets have no population. The places with civilization are going to be Earth, Earth's moon, Mars, Ceres. I am sure there are places on other moons or others in subspace once you use the jump gates, but I haven't started looking out that way, yet.

Bloodbeak wrote: reefershark wrote: Ok so I flew to Jupiter to run my messages, and all I can do is mine - I can't seem to find or land on Jupiter station? Anyone? It's the same as landing on one of the moons. It's the one furthest to the right. Click on Jupiter. Above it will be its moons. Jupiter station is with those.

Aha gotcha. Cheers mate, simple once you see it...

Once I'm repaired and refuelled I'm going to go through that gate you mentioned to the left, will report back

PHI 21 wrote: reefershark wrote: Ok so I flew to Jupiter to run my messages, and all I can do is mine - I can't seem to find or land on Jupiter station? Anyone? Took me a while to find Jupiter station too. When you have the Jupiter planet screen up, before you land, at the top left of the planet info box it shows (I think) 5 small circles. The last one is the Jupiter station. I haven't tried landing on any of the others, but I'm assuming you can. I may have to start over if I can. I sent the ship on a trip from Ceres to Earth, then had to shut my computer down as I was going to be out of town all day. I come back and I'm not anywhere near Earth. I have no fuel and my solar system screen in the upper left corner is blank. I finally was able to locate and center on Earth, but some how, I ended up way, way, way out of the solar system and I don't think I can even get a tow back to anything resembling civilization.

This just keeps getting more and more interesting

I'm currently debt free and up by about 1.5M. I've explored a far bit of space and been to Alpha Centuri and Debran-D. Here's what i've learnt so far:

At the moment the best way to make cash is by trading. If you trade illegal goods there is a risk of getting busted and losing your stash so you're better off staying legit*. Most populated planets have at least 2 stores: Goods and Resources. Goods are more high end and there is usually a better profit margin. However resources are usually more abundant. Note there are other stores at some populated planets, these can be to buy personal weapons, clothes etc or weapon caches. I believe you could trade with weapon caches as well but they are generally pretty expensive.

*Side note on this: I noticed Dexonol which is in most Goods stores has a yellow skull and crossbones on the image, when you click for more info it says it is regulated. I assume it can only be sold between certain planets. I have traded it from Earth to Ceres and I wasn't checked by the police so I don't know where it is regulated (or whether this feature is active in the game yet) but you may want to be wary of this product or similar.

If you want to quickly increase your cash by trading:

-Sell the ship you bought to start off with (probably the Grasshopper) and buy the cargo ship, STV-3 Mini. It has the most cargo space of the starting ships so you can sell more items per trip.
- Trade between Earth and the Moon to start off with. The only fuel you use is to take off.
- If you've exhausted the profitable items between Earth and the Moon then add Mars into the mix. It's a short journey and many products on Earth can be sold on Mars for a good margin and many products on Mars can be sold on the Moon.
- Check the prices between planets before stocking up. The prices do change. I'm not sure whether they change daily or due to past trading, but I was selling a lot of coffee and cocoa to Mars from Earth and the price they'll buy for on Mars has now plummeted.

I started by saying at the moment and this is because the manual lists piracy as another way of making money. So far I have not encountered any NPCs or any real users, but it seems likely a feature will be to either raid or be raided by other players and NPCs.

Hope that's of use and i'll probably a write some other posts about other ways to make money, jump gates and travelling into deep space later on