Omicron's OFFICIAL TRADE FIGHT BUILD THINK money maker guide

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Omicron
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Omicron's OFFICIAL TRADE FIGHT BUILD THINK money maker guide

Post by Omicron » Sun, 15. Feb 04, 21:30

Omicron's OFFICIAL TRADE FIGHT BUILD THINK money maker guide

Hello and welcome!

This guide is primarily a guide for newbies to weigh the pros and cons of the various ways of generating that all important thing: money...

Money is the be all and end all in the X-Universe, as it is in 'Reality', and many newcomers have a hard time figuring out how to generate a decent income. There are too many 'how do i make money?' threads cluttering up the X-Universe Forum, so i am hoping this guide will help lower the amount of these threads....

so, you're new to the X-Universe, you've just jumped into you're disco (discoverer), and you're floating around in space, wondering where on earth to start....

well, as the slogan of the game says: TRADE FIGHT BUILD THINK




TRADE

Trade, pretty much the only way to begin generating income at the start of the game. The best advice involves playing out a few story missions, in the hopes of gaining a few rewards:
Spoiler
Show
you'll be given a TS class Argon Mercury (Merc for short), after completing mission 2
once you've got yourself a freighter (TS or TP class), its time to find something to trade, energy cells are the best thing to trade at the start of the game, buy them for 9-12Cr. and sell for 18-22Cr. or so. Use the money generated to upgrade you freighter, and soon you have thousands and thousands of Cr. to spend.

Trading however, eventually becomes obsolete as a method of generating money, and the process can be quite boring if you do it manually...

you can however use Trade Extension MK III, which will allow a frieghter to trade commodities for you, but the extension costs over 500,000Cr., and by the time you have that much to spend freely you probably won't need the extension anyways....

Pros
:arrow: Can generate a healthy degree of money at the start of the game.
:arrow: Helps the player get an idea of good/bad selling/buying prices around the universe.
:arrow: Using Trade Extension MK.III, can bring in several million Cr. per hour, but only if you're lucky.

Cons
:arrow: Can be tedious.
:arrow: Does not generate substantial amounts of money compared to factory building etc., and is therefore obsolete later in the game.

Potential Income per hour: anything up to roughly 1,000,000Cr. with TE MK.III, and up to roughly 500,000Cr. without....




FIGHT

Ah, Fighting, its come under a lot of criticism since the games launch, but it actually an extremely good method for gaining money.... one of the best in fact....

So, how do you make money by fighting? well, there are three main ways:

firstly, you could attack a freight ship, get it to drop its cargo, steal said cargo and sell it off....

or, you could get yourself a police license, and get payed for pirate, xenon or khaak kills...

however, neither of these generates anywhere near as much as the third method: ship capturing....

ship capturing is just what it sounds like, you make a pilot decide that he/she values his life more than his ship, the pilot ejects, and the ship is yours...

one of the best guides on how to capture ships can be found at the official UNCC thread here:

http://www.egosoft.com/x2/forum/viewtop ... sc&start=0

capturing is how i personally make the most money, if i capture one Argon Nova every 2 minutes (not particularly hard), thats 30 captured by the end of the hour (i usually capture nearly 40 per hour on average)...

each nova sells for an average of 500,000 Cr.

30x500,000=15,000,000Cr. for an hours work

so as you can see, fighting is an extremely effective way of making money, only problem is you're going to need at least a good M4 class ship before you even think about capturing other ships.....

Pros
:arrow: Generates a huge amount of money per hour.
:arrow: Improves combat skills for dealing with Khaak/Xenon/Pirates.

Cons
:arrow: Need at least an M4 to start capturing.
:arrow: No way to automate capturing, and spending an hour manually capturing ships can get tedious.

Potential Income per hour: up to around 15,000,000 Cr. per hour.
Last edited by Omicron on Sun, 15. Feb 04, 21:45, edited 2 times in total.

Omicron
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Post by Omicron » Sun, 15. Feb 04, 21:31

BUILD

Building, the main focus of the game for veterans of the X-Universe..

Building involves building and maintaining factories, like the ones you see around the X-Universe. A typical factory (say a Solar Power Plant or SPP), is a place where resources are bought (crystals in the case of the SPP), which are then converted into products (energy cells). The factory is maintained by TS or TP class freighters which buy in resources or sell off products.....

now, time to get one thing very clear: in general, Solar Power Plants are the single most effective factory in the game. Many have complained that this makes all other factories obsolete, but we dont need to go into that here....

Now, factory management is possibly the most complex and in depth aspect of the game, so i am not going to go into setting up or maintaining factories here...

i will however provide the following links, which should help any aspiring factory owners:

http://www.egosoft.com/x2/forum/viewtop ... +managment
-Revens guide to advanced factory management and setting up chains...

another great feature of building factories is that you can leave them running and go interact with various 'Real Life' situations while your factories happily generate money for you... however, you may be required to replace the odd transport

Building, however, is not as profitable as capturing. The average SPP will bring in about 1,200,000Cr. per hour, so in order to make the kind of money you can get from capturing, you need at least 10 SPPs....

Pros
:arrow: Generates a decent amount per hour.
:arrow: Allows you to go off and do other things while your factories make money for you.

Cons
:arrow: Transport ships are often destroyed by various enemies and will need replacing.
:arrow: Doesnt make as much money per hour as capturing.

Potential Income per hour: limited only by how many factories you have. average SPP will make 1,200,000Cr. per hour...




THINK

Thinking, something which everyone must do at some point, even though they usually dont....

well, i'll be honest, sitting at your computer thinking will not make you money in this game on its own, but various aspect of other money-making processes do require some thought, such as where to place factories (they need to be in an area where they will make profit, so Xenon Sector 347 is not going to be a good idea)...

Pros
:arrow: Gets you closer to gaining enlightenment
:arrow: Stimulates the brain

Cons
:arrow: Doesnt actually directly make you money
:arrow: Large stretches of time spent thinking can cause frown marks or headaches

Potential Income per hour: 0Cr. per hour







well, i hope ive been of some help to you all, and i hope the newbs out there will take a few minutes to read this through before posting yet more 'how do i make money?' threads :D

if anyone has any comments, suggestions or additions to this guide, please feel free to post them and i will include them as i see fit :D
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Darshu
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Post by Darshu » Sun, 15. Feb 04, 21:59

Lol Omicron, I busted a gut when I read your "THINK" pros and cons, very nice.

You want me to paste and copy into my sticky post just in case? Lol, enlightenment and frown marks. :lol:

Omicron
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Post by Omicron » Sun, 15. Feb 04, 22:52

yeah stick it in your post Darshu

lol, glad you found it amusing.... :D
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Omicron
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Post by Omicron » Sun, 15. Feb 04, 23:33

any feedback from anyone??????
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littlej999
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Post by littlej999 » Sun, 15. Feb 04, 23:59

just starting ou with the game ... the tips proved very helpful. thanks :)

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Post by KiwiNZ » Mon, 16. Feb 04, 01:03

had to laugh about the THINKing part, too :D

there are flaws in your listing, though, good hints in general.

NO SPP makes 1.200.000 per hour! The max theoretical profit one SPP can make is just under 120.000cr per hour!! If you have to buy your crystals at 1684cr then this slips down to around 97.000cr.

TE MKIII does not make trading more profitable, if anything, it makes it less profitable. Why? Because your ship will do runs that do not generate substantial amounts of credits and the player normally would not waste time on. So those numbers are not correct. The advantage of TE MKIII is that you only spend a minimum of your own time supervising!

Anyway, good work. :thumb_up:

Omicron
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Post by Omicron » Mon, 16. Feb 04, 01:08

KiwiNZ wrote:had to laugh about the THINKing part, too :D

there are flaws in your listing, though, good hints in general.

NO SPP makes 1.200.000 per hour! The max theoretical profit one SPP can make is just under 120.000cr per hour!! If you have to buy your crystals at 1684cr then this slips down to around 97.000cr.

TE MKIII does not make trading more profitable, if anything, it makes it less profitable. Why? Because your ship will do runs that do not generate substantial amounts of credits and the player normally would not waste time on. So those numbers are not correct. The advantage of TE MKIII is that you only spend a minimum of your own time supervising!

Anyway, good work. :thumb_up:
a) firstly, i must re-iterate, my SPPs make 1,200,000Cr. per hour, but only when running SETA at 10x, i will add words to this effect in the guie, and for the TE MK.III, i am not garanteeing that the extension will make 1,000,000 per hour, like i said, it depends on how lucky you are, but i have heard several people saying they have made around that much using it, so i included it simply as an upper value for the amount of profit youi can make using TE MK.III....
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KiwiNZ
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Post by KiwiNZ » Mon, 16. Feb 04, 01:52

:lol: SETA 10X does bring it down to 120.000cr per GAME HOUR. So what you may want to point out is the fact that either the game progresses for an hour or ten hours to make that amount of profit. That would be transperent and people could reproduce it. ;)

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Post by Dscaper » Mon, 16. Feb 04, 03:44

Max sales double energy loops will bring in 1.9mil credits per SETA 10 Hour. :) - Short term it means you are losing money because of factory and transport costs, but long-term they're a nice investment.

Anyway... I thought you were the real advocate of the free energy loop, given your B-PPC diagram. ;)
When I find that pesky Suzy, I'm gonna stick her in an air lock, tell her to wave at the cameras, and then lob her out into space so that the pirates nearby can have her, then tell the salesman in the... toy shop... that I've 1.. 9.. 2... 2... 'ed her.

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Post by Creston » Mon, 16. Feb 04, 05:19

Good stuff Omicron.

By now I've already read most of the first 30 or so pages on this board, so it was common knowledge to me, but it's still an excellent summary. Deserves to be bumped or stickied :)

Creston

Omicron
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Post by Omicron » Mon, 16. Feb 04, 11:57

Dscaper wrote:Max sales double energy loops will bring in 1.9mil credits per SETA 10 Hour. :) - Short term it means you are losing money because of factory and transport costs, but long-term they're a nice investment.

Anyway... I thought you were the real advocate of the free energy loop, given your B-PPC diagram. ;)
i am a true advocate of the free energy loop, but wasnt sure whether newbs to the game would want to go stright into that sort of stuff, so i provided the link to Revens thread just in case....
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Post by Dscaper » Mon, 16. Feb 04, 13:51

I thought you'd jumped ship to the pure-SPP camp then... *cough* Kidding ;)

I can feel the need for a raiding session of the threads soon, and the creation of an actual document going through the basics, diversity and complex management. Last one I did for AO (Anarchy Online) Soldier ended up getting D/L'ed over 40,000 times from my server, so must have done something right. :)
When I find that pesky Suzy, I'm gonna stick her in an air lock, tell her to wave at the cameras, and then lob her out into space so that the pirates nearby can have her, then tell the salesman in the... toy shop... that I've 1.. 9.. 2... 2... 'ed her.

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Post by Omicron » Mon, 16. Feb 04, 16:14

go for it Dscaper, if you want any help, PM me....
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Dscaper
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Post by Dscaper » Mon, 16. Feb 04, 16:24

Who else have I got to credit for the energy loop? (I think it's Reven, but I could be wrong).
When I find that pesky Suzy, I'm gonna stick her in an air lock, tell her to wave at the cameras, and then lob her out into space so that the pirates nearby can have her, then tell the salesman in the... toy shop... that I've 1.. 9.. 2... 2... 'ed her.

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Newbie help

Post by Carr » Sat, 21. Feb 04, 11:38

Hi, I am a total newbie to game and am having trouble finding anywhere to sell things like energy cells that give good cr's. I am in Argon Prime, please can someone tell me the best place to buy and sell. Thanks.

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Post by Pugz » Sun, 14. Mar 04, 18:10

KiwiNZ wrote::lol: SETA 10X does bring it down to 120.000cr per GAME HOUR. So what you may want to point out is the fact that either the game progresses for an hour or ten hours to make that amount of profit. That would be transperent and people could reproduce it. ;)
lol so your saying it takes 10 hours for 1 SPP to make rroughly 1,200,000

no i don't think so. In only 8 hours I made 11,000,000 with one SPP with SETA x 10. And thats with buying price set to maximum and selling set to maximum and a transport buying and selling. Btw for people who want to know where it was then - I put the SPP in Lucky planets and btw thats with 2 of them there.

Factorys are by far the best at making money. I have over 100 factorys and am generating over 180 million overnight sometimes.
--~Good Profit~--

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CGrand
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Post by CGrand » Sun, 14. Mar 04, 23:21

Nice guide, wish i had read it before starting!

Though one minnor complaint - you did leave out the idea of going in the mining buisness

though i would say that!

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Post by ben6378 » Wed, 14. Apr 04, 22:59

Excellent post, lots of new ideas.....but....
1. I have no idea (or interest ) in scripting but want to set up free energy loops. Any sugestions to make my spp's more profitable as i'm only making enough to cover freighter replacements etc!!
2. Where do you buy Trade MkIII?
Hey! You'll really look cool as a piece of space debris!

M1:0 M2:4 M3:53 M4:19 M5:37 M6:8 TS:200+ TP:400+ TL:2 FACTS:258

BenjiCorp : Wiping Xenon from your gravidar!

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Post by UGHQ_Tempus » Thu, 15. Apr 04, 01:55

Check the TerraCorp HQ for the MK3.
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