Finding it hard to make money in X2

[TrustyMac]

I'm a beginner who's really early in the game, followed some advice to sell the 25MW shields from the Boron after the escort mission, but then I got greedy and spent it all on a new Teladi ship.

It's fast, but it has almost no cargo space I have almost no idea how to make money now.

[Tranxalive]

I’m assuming you bought a Teladi Harrier. Fortunately, the Harrier is one of the best M5s, and is mildly decent for combat with M5s and M4s.

If you can outfit it with Alpha Particle Accelerator Cannons, which I believe are sold by the Teladi, you can try your luck at Capturing. It’s a great way to earn money early game.

You can also try the BBS missions, their missions vary, but they can be very rewarding. Assassination missions are very profitable, especially later once you start earning millions for them, but that requires a high Combat Rank.

You can try to make do with what you have and trade. In X:T, I sold my Buster, bought a Discoverer, and gave it nothing, and then wasted my money until I had about 100 credits, and traded with its abysmal cargo hold. Eventually you won’t have to worry about slow trading, and you’ll be swimming in money, mostly anyways. You’ll at least be able to buy stuff more often.

I’d recommend you start saving up for an M4, TS, or a station. Actually, you should have Elena Kho’s Mercury. You can use that instead to trade. Taking a reasonable BBS trading mission along with trading is very profitable.

There’s my advice. Good luck, and make good profit.

[EyMann_MachHin]

You have all the time in the world. As far as I know, there is no time limit on the plot missions. You could have taken any time during the Mi Ton mission and use the loaned personell transport to do some trading, with the seed money you got from the first delivery. And as was said, you should also have gotten a Mercury transport from Elena for delivering Mi Ton. Unless you sold it for scrapmetal, the Teladi ship you bought should help raising the funds to repair that ship and start raking in money with a larger cargo hold.
If you got a Teladi Harrier, it is really not the worst ship. It has the largest cargohold of the M5s and is decently fast. Definitely check the stations for shuttle missions of either trade representatives or the gambler. Those pay pretty decent for just flying around. Not sure if it has any impact on the later difficulty you might want to get out of those after 3-4 stops, because they inevitably will end with a time limit you cannot make. I even once had the case where the gambler wanted me to take him to a station that doesn't exist. Not sure how that happened.

You can make it!