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kins

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making money
« on: June 04, 2022, 10:36:33 AM »

Just bought this and im looking to make money.
Ive been running drugs to pirates which is ludicrously good at making money to the point of feeling "cheesy" am I missing something in terms of the other ways to make money or is it drugs or bust?
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Brainwright

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Re: making money
« Reply #1 on: June 04, 2022, 11:41:23 AM »

Getting a commission and hunting pirates/the things beyond civilized space is the second ludicrously profitable enterprise.
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Megas

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Re: making money
« Reply #2 on: June 04, 2022, 11:44:36 AM »

Commodity runs (drugs, supplies, or otherwise) are the easiest way to raise money before endgame.  By endgame, player can have a fleet that can kill bounty after bounty flawlessly and/or have a set of colonies that earn about a half million credits a month.
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Thaago

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Re: making money
« Reply #3 on: June 04, 2022, 05:43:29 PM »

I agree that drug/heavy weapon/organs running is way too easy. There are many other ways to make money (bounty hunting, exploring, taking contact missions, taking 'random' missions that pop up on comms, a comission, etc) but for practically risk free in core profits those smuggling routes are the easiest and safest.

Personally, I think that black markets shouldn't be accessible at all unless a player has snuck in undetected, and many of the worlds without patrols should get patrols to make them harder to sneak into. And then the scans from patrols that locate players should find contraband at a higher rate. There's a whole set of mechanics for sensors/stealth that exist that can let a player sneak in literally anywhere (even fortress worlds!) but most of the time they aren't useful to learn or use.
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Candesce

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Re: making money
« Reply #4 on: June 04, 2022, 06:41:35 PM »

Smuggling contraband is very easy, yes.

I think piracy is probably a little faster, if you pick your target convoys well, and certainly a lot more interesting - but it does call for some consideration with regards to your faction standings, and you'll probably end up selling your loot on the black market anyway.

If you've got the hang of fighting, taking a commission and going out and smashing stuff isn't as fast as smuggling, but it's probably a lot more engaging; and exploring systems outside of the core is a great way to find interesting loot you can't just buy in markets.
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Drazan

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Re: making money
« Reply #5 on: June 05, 2022, 02:22:41 AM »

Yeah smugling is busted right now. I think a way to solve this is to increase the profit from other sources, or a more interesting way is to make that not every colony has infinite money and the price they are willing to pay for deficit commodities are ballanced aganist their actual ability to spend money. Even tho those pirates really needs 400 heavy armamaents they are not gonna pay you half a million for it as they are broke ass pirates. (Also half a million is enough to build a heavy industry which could supply infinite amout of heavy armaments over time.)
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Megas

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Re: making money
« Reply #6 on: June 05, 2022, 04:53:51 AM »

A better fix is to have bounty rewards not assume flawless victories.  Named bounties should be worth at least contact bounty (which is about double named bounty) at a minimum.  Base bounties should be much higher like they originally were.  Bar missions that sic a revenge or hunter fleet after you should be worth their equivalent of a contact bounty, not give 50k to 80k.  (Most bar missions are traps and schmuck baits.)

Bounties also scale up too quickly, or rather, there are spikes when bounties go from reasonable to too hard too quickly, and I need commodity runs in the meantime to play catch up.  By endgame, when player finally catches up and surpasses bounty fleets' power, he can get his revenge and beat up bounties for practically free money and story points.  (This is about the time I want fleet with Ziggurat, Revenant, and two tugs only for about +400% xp for maximum xp/story point gain from endgame human fleets, if I do not want to farm Ordos yet for +500% xp.)

Early in the game, or rather anytime before my fleet can crush an endgame bounty (because bounties quickly spike and outlevel my fleet early), when I have junk hardware or otherwise inferior (or even equal) forces, I do not want to fight because a single casualty will eat most or all of the profit.  I only fight them when my fleet is superior enough to crush them flawlessly and effortlessly.

In other words, commodity runs are great for raising money to fund colonies and/or a war fleet that can destroy bounties flawlessly.

Even with current commodity runs, it feels tedious at times.  Anything to fast track from out of early-game hell to endgame power is great.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2022, 05:15:14 AM by Megas »
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Thaago

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Re: making money
« Reply #7 on: June 05, 2022, 08:51:02 AM »

I have to disagree with the bounties - you don't need flawless victories to make money, especially with how easy it is to guarantee ship recovery. We get a preview of the ships in all bounties as well, so its easy to pick and choose fights.
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Megas

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Re: making money
« Reply #8 on: June 05, 2022, 09:35:57 AM »

I have to disagree with the bounties - you don't need flawless victories to make money, especially with how easy it is to guarantee ship recovery. We get a preview of the ships in all bounties as well, so its easy to pick and choose fights.
Guaranteeing ship recovery only is easy.  Guaranteeing ship recovery without taking more d-mods requires Hull Restoration (which is not guaranteed, but the chances are reasonably high), or at least ships with Rugged Construction.

Unless I want to build for Derelict Operations, a ship taking a d-mod is as good as lost, unless I have Hull Restoration to remove it for free.

It is easy to see the fights... nearly all of them during midgame have better and more ships than mine, and they probably have better officers too (because theirs are max level while most of mine are not).  That means I do not want to fight any of them (at least not without Hull Restoration) because the risk of a casualty is too great.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2022, 09:44:02 AM by Megas »
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Thaago

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Re: making money
« Reply #9 on: June 05, 2022, 07:07:10 PM »

You don't have to restore a ship when it takes D mods: instead just keep using it. It is a slightly less effective ship (though costs less supplies to deploy). Then when it blows up next time, still keep using it. Repeat until the ship is truly useless, or becomes obsolete anyways for fleet composition. When a ship takes a D mod, it doesn't instantly becomes 0 value: it becomes ~90% value. The actual amount of money lost per time blown up from taking D mods is not that great. This is especially true because the most likely ships to blow up in a semi-even fight are the smaller, cheaper ones.

The calculus changes on ships that have story points invested in them, though depending on the S mod the experience point bonus reduces the impact of that as well. For me S mods are usually endgame optimization type things and aren't needed for bounty hunting, though I'll throw them on a few ships that I plan on keeping long term, like XIV ships.

For midgame fights where the enemy has more, better ships with more and better officers: that's what makes it fun! Its not quite as profitable these days to recover capital ships from those fights, but it can still be done to leap from destroyer fleet to Capital + Augmented engines (I often skip the cruiser stage entirely, though grabbing a Conquest through plunder is very tempting then).
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Megas

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Re: making money
« Reply #10 on: June 05, 2022, 07:45:02 PM »

For midgame fights where the enemy has more, better ships with more and better officers: that's what makes it fun!
For me, that is not being fun, that is my character having a death wish and acting dumb or very desperate.  I do not want to fight if the likely result is losing progress.

When I do not have an overpowered fleet that can crush the enemy, I prefer to take the easy money from commerce so I can turn my weak fleet into a stronger fleet that has a chance to kill the enemy flawlessly.

In my last game, I avoided combat as much as possible in the early stages, and I abused trade to build up my fleet.  Only when my fleet was built up enough to have a sufficient advantage over the enemy is when I attacked those that appeared weak enough.

For midgame fights where the enemy has more, better ships with more and better officers: that's what makes it fun! Its not quite as profitable these days to recover capital ships from those fights, but it can still be done to leap from destroyer fleet to Capital + Augmented engines (I often skip the cruiser stage entirely, though grabbing a Conquest through plunder is very tempting then).
When I have Hull Restoration, recovering ships from the enemy becomes my primary source of new ships.  I recover anything with no or a single d-mod, and I end up with more Vanguards than I can use this way.  Critical ships (like my first capital or automated ships) will be recovered regardless of d-mods.  I do not take commissions, and most black markets do not sell bigger ships often enough.

Hull Restoration is probably my favorite skill because casualties become acceptable.  It is a relief if I lose several ships in my fleet after winning and all of them are recovered easily without any d-mods.
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Vanshilar

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Re: making money
« Reply #11 on: June 05, 2022, 09:19:19 PM »

D-mods are actually kind of fun. They make your fleet "smaller" for XP bonus purposes (thus giving you more XP), and have the benefit of making your fleet cheaper to use as well. Depending on your playstyle, a number of d-mods don't really affect your ships that much so they can readily be applied for the cheaper supplies and XP bonus "bonuses".

I think the only big disadvantage to making use of d-mods is that they're random as to what you get, and you can't remove one at a time -- you have to remove all or none of them. So each time the ship blows up it becomes a sort of roulette game as to whether or not you'll get another non-detrimental d-mod that you're willing to keep, or one that you have to give up and repair the whole ship and start over trying again. If we could choose which d-mod(s) we wanted to remove, that would remove the roulette aspect of the game, but I could understand if Alex feels like that would actually end up making d-mods too strong, along with d-mod-related effects like Derelict Operations.

Take for example my current LP Brawler fleet, which is made up of me in a Medusa, a bunch of LP Brawlers, and as many Falcon XIV's as I can fit. This fleet relies on its shields, so it can automatically take Compromised Armor (-20% armor), Compromised Hull (-30% hull), and Structural Damage (-20% armor, -20% hull) as d-mods without much issue. My Medusa is using dual Light Dual Machine Guns with the elite PD skill as well as dual Cryoblasters for range, and it's also using Safety Overrides (my entire fleet has SO). Pre-SO, the ranges would be 500 and 600 for the LDMG and Cryoblaster respectively, but after SO, they would be 462.5 and 487.5. If it got Glitched Sensor Array (-10% weapon range), then the pre-SO weapon range becomes 450 and 540, so after SO, they become 450 and 472.5. So the weapon ranges decrease from 462.5 to 450 (-2.7%) and from 487.5 to 472.5 (-3.1%). Basically not much at all, so it can take this d-mod as well.

For the LP Brawlers, they can take Damaged Weapon Mounts (-25% weapon turn rate, +30% recoil), since their weapons are on hardpoints anyway so it doesn't matter. I could also let my Medusa take it as well, but I think I might sometimes need that weapon turn rate, especially for fighters, so I chose not to accept that for my Medusa.

So my Medusa and the LP Brawlers can each take up to 4 d-mods without much issue, while the Falcon XIV's can take up to 3 d-mods. That means that if I get lucky and get the right d-mods for each of the ships, it only costs me about 41% of the supplies to deploy the Medusa and LP Brawlers, and about 51% of the supplies to deploy the Falcon XIV's. That's a nice saving each battle which adds up over time.

In terms of the XP bonus, my character is 63.75 DP, I have 2 Atlases and a Prometheus for an additional 7.5 DP, and I don't have any officers (I use Support Doctrine). Each d-mod makes the ship's DP count as 90% of its original DP (cumulative, so 3 d-mods means it counts as 72.9% of its original DP). So if I had 1 Medusa, 4 Falcon XIV's, and 22 LP Brawlers, my DP in terms of the XP bonus would be 249.25. If they had the perfect set of d-mods (4 each for the Medusa and LP Brawlers, and 3 each for the Falcon XIV's), then my DP in terms of the XP bonus would be 192.1182. So that amounts to about 30% more XP.

There are 11 possible d-mods that they can get, and realistically, the chance of them getting the perfect set is close to zero. It's easy to let them blow up a couple of times to get 1 or 2 right ones, but getting to the 3rd or 4th one is very difficult. So realistically, they can count on getting around 1.5 d-mods on average, which still amounts to around a 12% XP bonus.

In my case, this fleet is meant to test the enemy fleet size for XP purposes, so I want to keep it at around 230 DP in terms of how the DP is calculated for the XP bonus, because that's just slightly bigger than the biggest single Ordos fleet I've ever seen (I want the XP bonus to be large but not hit the actual +500% cap, since the reported XP bonus is what queries the enemy fleet's size). So in my case it's more about having the most powerful fleet within a set DP (for XP bonus purposes) limit. If I were to not bother with d-mods, then I would end up with something like 1 Medusa, 2 Falcon XIV's, 24 LP Brawlers (231.25 DP for XP bonus purposes). But if I now assume that they'll get on average 1 or 2 d-mods each, then I could use 1 Medusa, 5 Falcon XIV's, 21 LP Brawlers (231.135 DP for XP bonus purposes). So by making use of 1-2 d-mods per ship, I get to replace 3 of the LP Brawlers with Falcon XIV's, which are much more powerful and provide more fleet effectiveness.

So it's a bit of a niche application, with a relatively small benefit, but playing around with d-mods is actually pretty fun.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2022, 09:25:47 PM by Vanshilar »
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Serenitis

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Re: making money
« Reply #12 on: June 06, 2022, 09:00:07 AM »

So it's a bit of a niche application, with a relatively small benefit, but playing around with d-mods is actually pretty fun.
An addendum to this:
An intrinsic part of D-mods is a reduction to the amount of supplies needed to recover a ship after combat.
Multiple mods have a greater effect, with diminishing returns (it's a fraction being multiplied by the nth power, where n is the number of d-mods).
No skills nescessary to use this either.
Badly formatted table of d-mod recovery costs
# D-Mods% Recover Cost
0100
180
264
351
441
533
626
721
817
913
1011
[close]

2 d-mods is roughly breaking even with supplies recovered by salvage+debris from the same battle.
3 d-mods or more is costing you less to deploy+recover than the salvage income.
If all your combat ships have an average of 3 or more d-mods between them, you can literally make money by fighting, then scooping up all the supplies and selling them.
The more 'trash' your fleet is, the faster you accumulate supplies.
Using any of the campaign level Industry skills amplifies this further.

So yeah, d-mods are p. fun.
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Thaago

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Re: making money
« Reply #13 on: June 06, 2022, 09:19:51 AM »

... cool stuff ...

Out of curiosity what is your SO Falcon XIV build? I've been using non-SO Falcons (heavy autocannons and phase lances) and think they are quite good with the latest round of buffs, though a little bit low on firepower compared to the more offensive, squishier destroyers. HMG + Heavy blasters?

[Edit]
More on topic, here's a tip for making money kins: Sell your AI cores to the Tri-Tachyon base commanders. You have to talk to them and navigate to the options, but they give 3x credit value. So an alpha core is 450k, or the far more common gammas are 30k.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2022, 10:23:07 AM by Thaago »
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Vanshilar

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Re: making money
« Reply #14 on: June 07, 2022, 01:45:41 AM »

Out of curiosity what is your SO Falcon XIV build?

Interestingly, my SO Falcon XIV's weapons are Xyphos, dual Assault Chainguns, and 4 IR Pulse Lasers. The hullmods are Converted Hangar, Hardened Shields, Solar Shielding, and Safety Overrides, with all but SO built-in. I opted to put 12 points into capacity and 6 points into vent although that may change, but it seems to work well enough for now.

It's a particular build to fill a particular niche, and not a general-purpose build. My LP Brawlers use 1 ACG, 1 HMG, and 2 LDMG, so they're very anti-shield, which is good for neutralizing the offensive capability of [REDACTED], but not as good for killing them, nor for anti-fighter work. (And they don't really have the flux for dual ACG either.) So the Xyphos are there to provide some anti-fighter support, and the dual ACG is because the Falcon XIV's are sent in after larger targets, where presumably there are several Brawlers already there for anti-shield, so the Falcon XIV can focus on anti-armor/hull. Similarly, my Medusa has dual LDMG and dual Cryoblasters because I'm primarily hunting down weakened targets (and the larger ones) before they get away, so it's not a general-purpose build either; generally speaking, I'm fighting targets which the Brawlers have already driven to high flux.

The Falcon XIV's are used because they provide a good niche. Xyphos is needed to counter fighters. I tried Medusas which are cheaper and thus more Xyphos coverage but they didn't have the same kind of firepower as dual ACG against armor/hull. Larger ships like Apogees, Eradicators, Eagles, Champions, etc. do more damage, but since they're more expensive, I couldn't have as many of them on the battlefield for anti-fighter support. Thus it ended up being Falcon XIV. Each Falcon XIV does roughly 1.5x the damage of each LP Brawler, plus provide anti-fighter coverage, so it's advantageous to field more of them (within my DP limit for the XP bonus), even though they do less damage on a per-DP basis.

If I had more Cryoblasters, the Falcon XIV's would use 2 HMG, 1 Cryoblaster, and 1 AMSRM, but I haven't done the [SUPER REDACTED] ships yet. I just haven't bothered to since the [REDACTED] fights are pretty short anyway (usually around 210 seconds per fight according to Detailed Combat Results).

[Edit]
More on topic, here's a tip for making money kins: Sell your AI cores to the Tri-Tachyon base commanders. You have to talk to them and navigate to the options, but they give 3x credit value. So an alpha core is 450k, or the far more common gammas are 30k.

Just to put some numbers on this. Thus far I've tabulated the stats for 27 full [REDACTED] fleets, i.e. ignoring the first 10 [REDACTED] fleets that each station sends out (which seem to be introductory and are thus weaker), and only counting the ones that spawn after that. For those 27 fleets that I've tabulated thus far:

* The fleets are 311 FP on average; the lowest I've seen is 250 FP and the highest I've seen is 386 FP.
* The fleets are 375 DP on average; the lowest I've seen is 278 DP and the highest I've seen is 484 DP.
* There are on average 10.1 Alphas, 4.7 Betas, and 4.5 Gammas as officers per fleet.
* There are on average 1.7 Radiants, 5.3 Brilliants, 3.8 Scintillas, 5.4 Fulgents, 4.1 Glimmers, and 4.0 Lumens per fleet.
* Of those fleets, the spawn code for Scintillas seem to be more "all or nothing"; 7 of those 27 fleets (26%) had no Scintillas at all, and if they spawn, on average there were about 5 of them. For all the other ships, generally speaking at least 1 of each will always spawn, and the distribution is centered (i.e. peaks) near their averages given above. You very occasionally get a no-Radiant fleet for example but those are pretty rare; generally you'll see 1 or 2 per fleet. Scintillas are the only ship where there's a significant chance that none will spawn at all, unlike all the other ships.
* Fleets average around 676k base XP (assuming doubled XP from SP bonus).
* They have an average fleet size for XP bonus purposes of around 1080 DP. I've seen as low as 748 DP and as high as 1339 DP thus far.
* On average I've gotten 1.5 Alphas, 1.2 Betas, and 1.7 Gammas as loot per fleet thus far. If sold to Tri-Tachyon, each Alpha is 450k credits, each Beta is 90k credits, and each Gamma is 30k credits.
* This means that each full [REDACTED] fleet will earn you around 842k credits in cores, on average, at least from my data thus far. You also get other loot to sell on top of that, of course.

So you can get pretty close to 1 million credits per [REDACTED] fleet.
« Last Edit: June 07, 2022, 08:45:17 AM by Vanshilar »
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