Down to about 16M credits after refitting the Cutter for mining I've not seen that number for a long time. Luckily, it was quickly fixed with a 7M influx from turning in my mining yields, plus a lot more Engineer materials.

Ice, Felicity Farseer allows a level 1 power plant upgrade and its crafting cost is just 1 unit of sulphur.
An 8D power plant updated with level 1 overcharge can output 30.24 MW and an 8C can do 33.6 MW.

About 3 weeks ago, in "Herzog Gateway" (HIP 118321) I could fill my Corvette with passangers (mix first class to economy class cabins) to "Littrow City" in Damona System (1 jump range). Littrow City is 386,521 ls from star and that takes around 20 minutes from station to station and another 20 minutes to fill the cabins and the return but it gives me allways around 40 million per trip so an average of 1 million/minute. I fill my cabins and get the remain missions with courier to same station. Because is far from star they pay around 800.000 to a million per courier mission.
You have to be alied or friendly to Herzog factions so before you can get this profit it requires a couple of hours labour first.
Right now is my sweet spot to make easy money with out much worries.

Oh wow! Thanks for that update on power plant! My Cutter is really power-starved with what I have on it for mining and I'm starting to have problems on my Python as well, seems like the increased FSD range comes with increased power draw so my module priorities needed fixing and some modules turned off. I got confused when this issue came up the first few times! Might be best to look into upgrading power plants to compensate for the more power-hungry FSD.

I will look into this but at 300LY from my current location, I'm not eager to bring my Cutter to this. Maybe try it out in the Asp first? Can you give me more details about this? I've never done passenger missions before. Would it be worth it buying a passenger ship?

Unless you are filthy rich and have hundreds of rare materials to engeneer another ship I don't see any reason to have a second ship just for passangers. What I do with my corvette is to have few modules stored to diferent configurations and equip my ship with them when I need it. Optional modules like cargo racks and passangers cabins are very cheap and the transfer cost between stations are also very low so to me having a single nice equiped and engeneered ship is the best option. Your Cutter is already the best transport ship money can buy so stay with it both for cargo and passangers.

With this Harzog passanger thing, the trick is to have a big ship with lots of slots. Every mission use a diferent slot because of their type so you can't stack multiple missions on a single cabin and each mission gives you between 2 to 5 million. Big ships means big money. After you fill your ship with passangers you can also get courier missions to same station (Littrow City). They pay around 800.000 to a million each courier mission.
The only downsize is that to have this level of profit you have to be allied or friendly with Herzong factions. The first 2 work hours are not to make money but to climb reputation. At this stage don't waste time on money making missions or to have cargo on return. Just concentrate on reputation because a minute spent now is a minute less you have later to make millions.

P.S: This herzog missions were valid 2 weeks ago. I'm not 100% sure they are now.

Thanks alexb! I'll have a look at this sometime. Currently busy fitting stuff with engineered modules and collecting materials. If it's profitable, it'll be there when I'd do it. If it's a get-rich-quick scheme, I'm sure Frontier has nerfed that by now.

I suffered a major setback by losing my Cutter to a stupid mailslot mishap and knocked my bank balance down to around 2M credits. Being that low on funds, it was scary taking out the Cutter as I could not afford a buy back, but I had to, so fitted it out for cargo and with a 25LY loaded jump range and 720T capacity, I managed to drain a station's biowaste and deliver it to an agricultural system in exchange for slaves, er, I mean, worker transport Comfortably back up to about 75M now, but that was after having to sell back my 8C fuel scoop so that's around 56M credits for this evening.

I'll have to let the BGS re-stock the stations now and will check again tomorrow and if it's re-stocked properly, might do another round of trade runs to take a break from Engineers

My goal was to make 100M credits plus another 18M to re-buy my fuel scoop but my current trading run nets me almost 4M per round trip so I'm going to push this to 200M and maybe even make Elite rank on Trade. I've also stopped human trafficking and instead run medicines and clothing around the galaxy.

I'm really struggling to justify buying a Type-9. Sure, 32 more tons of cargo but even modified, it's only at 19LY jump range vs. my Cutter at 22LY laden. Sure, that 3LY may not mean much but my previous trade run was 21LY. I'm basically eliminating more profitable runs the lower I go in terms of jump range. I could have two trading ships, the Type-9 for short-hop trips and thus maximize my profit/hr and then convert to the Cutter for the slightly-longer ones, but then that means flying two or three ships around the galaxy! Too annoying.

I'm also struggling to justify buying A-rated Thrusters or Power Plants for the Cutter. 162M for the PP and the same for Thrusters. I'm not sure how an A-rated Thruster will reduce the drift in the Cutter, but the numbers don't look very good as far as other stats go. For 20M more, I could buy an A-rated Python for pew-pew and re-fit the other one for mining and will save me loads of headache swapping modules around. Heck, an A-rated FDL comes in at only 95M! Or for the cost of an A-rated PP and Thruster, I could buy a whole new Cutter and fit it for mining!

290M credits in the bank, goal is 311M credits to hit Elite. Almost there!!

Stopped doing Slave runs as well and have been delivering medicines and clothing instead and it's just paying slightly less than the previous runs but is also better for me mentally running this cargo. Feels like I'm helping out more, which must be true as my last route didn't need my services anymore. The only downside was that the administrator failed to tell me that their epidemic was over until I made one run at a loss. Idiot. It's all well and good when they need my help, huh? Luckily, my services did not go unnoticed and I got a message asking for help and moved my ship 180LY away to another system needing my speedy delivery services.

Okay, this is interesting. I thought I needed to get to 100% Tycoon ranking to be promoted to Elite. I'm still stuck at 99% Tycoon but already have my awards and permit.

I left my last station with this:








I jumped to my next system and noticed unread messages, so I opened it up and saw these:





So I go to my right panel and promptly got confused. 99% Tycoon but I got my Founders World permit!





A bit of a lightshow opening this message as well. Very cool!













Docked on station and checked my stats again. Yep, definitely 99% and definitely got my Founder's World permit. Odd. Checked my Trading profits and it's actually showing me as about 297M credits away from the required profit level for Elite rank, so I don't know what's going on there.








And I can confirm there's a delay in the stats update. It went up to 100% and Elite status as I was uploading pics and working on this post. Yay me!!







I guess losing that Cutter was a blessing in disguise, huh? It prompted me to grind some credits again which pushed my ranking up enough that I felt it was worth a go pushing for Elite rank. Initially, I just wanted to build up a comfortable buffer again, maybe 50M credits, but blew past that quickly. I thought "okay, 100M credits plus enough to buy back my 8C fuel scoop" and got that quickly too and it was at this time that I noticed my trade ranking go up quite a bit as well, so I just decided to keep my head down and keep going. A few movies and YouTube videos helped a lot but probably slowed down my progress, but no matter. Slowly but surely, I guess.

I actually calculated that I needed 310M credits to hit Elite but I guess the delay in stats update threw off my numbers and I was actually at a higher percentage than I had entered in my calcuations. From the screenshot, I hit Elite at 305M credits instead.

I'm only about 96LY away from Shinrarta; my DBE trave ship is actually further away at 115LY where one of my last trade routes was. I guess I may pay the place a visit and see if I should relocate there, or just make it base #3. I do like my current base (#2) as it has a pristing metallic ring just outside the station and mining really helps get some nice materials for Engineers.

Paid a visit to Jameson Memorial and it's a sweet place! All 33 ships available for a sweet discount! Only 12% discount on modules though, compared to 17% for LYR systems. I guess it'll do though, as the station is reported to have everything in stock

I've been running a shield-less T-9 since they added the extra storage in my 'home' system and popping into the next system for a reasonable 1.7 mil profit per round trip. They are high and med security and apart from the very odd interdiction it's been going fine.

Last night I got that dreaded message that said 'I've found you at last' or similar. No prob I will just boost and FSD out of there as usual. However, he gets me down to 37% and I'm in all sorts of trouble when he is jumped by security forces. I decide to FSD out and continue but he gets me again and this time I'm done for.Apart from the buy-back fee there is over 10 mil worth of gold spread around the universe. Should I have waited until security dealt with him? I assume he dodged them and went for me again.

Maybe shields ought to be fitted this time but I'm terrible at speccing ships. What's the max cargo I can have + shields?

I don't own a T-9, but I threw this together on Coriolis.

Shielded T-9

Any smaller and may as well not have a shield. 496 tons with a class 5 shield.

I suppose you could go with a class 4 and engineer it to make it worth having on the ship.Doing so gets you up to 512 tons.

Too bad about the loss of your ship. Where is this gold floating around exactly?

I used to run shield-less a long, long, long time ago too. When the AI got smart and would target my thrusters or FSD, I lost a few ships to AI and I've put shields on again. No sense in giving them an easy target. Now I just laugh as I boost away and FSD out.

I've not flown a Typre-9 in a very long while; IIRC, my Anaconda carried less cargo but the jump range allowed me to ply a much more profitable route which ended up more credits per hour. 1.7m per round trip is low; you can do better easily, but will depend on your jump range. You can mount a Size 5 or Size 6 shield generator on your ship; I'd go with a Size 6 as I'd like to err on the side of caution.

If you need any help finding good routes, I'll be glad to help. Post your cargo space and laden jump range, plus your current location and I can find one for you.

Ah yes,he did knock out my FSD as I remember,so all I could do was sit there and await the end. Very frustrating.

Ice,I was running shields until recently but the lack of interdictions on this route were negligible so I went for the 700+ cargo instead. I suppose I was living on borrowed time and should just accept a lost ship once in a while.

I thought that trade run was good,gold one way (1.1 mil profit) and mineral extractors the other way (700k profit). Only 2 stations and a short jump involved.Never bothered to time it to see what profit per hour it gives.What do you consider a good run? I don't like doing multiple jumps,I like to keep it easy. I don't stray too far from home,for me a deep-space exploration trip is 200 LY

Sorry for the absence, some family matters to attend to.

What is your jump range, Chucky? A good route will be around 3M-4M for a round trip and if you can do one in 10-12min, or about 5 per hour, then that's good as far as I'm concerned. To find a good trade route, go to eddb.io, select Loop Route, enter your Max Hop Distance (laden jump range), set Max Price Age to 7 days or 15 days so that you're not dealing with old data, and set your Landing Pad to L. Also set Distance to 1,000ls. You can enter your current location so you know how far away the suggested systems will be from your current system.

Here's what I got just this evening. The profit shown will be slightly off, so let's assume 4,500 credits profit per ton per round trip. A Type-9 with a 6A shield gen and Docking Computer will still do 720T cargo so that's 3,240,000 credits profit per round trip. However, a stock FSD will only get you around 12LY laden jump range so it's really worth doing some Engineer mods. A Grade 5 Increased Range mod with Mass Manager experimental effect will boost that Size 6 FSD to 19.36LY (or 19.62LY with a 6D shield gen instead of a 6A, fly unarmed and it'll go up to 19.79LY) opening up some more trade routes for you.





Profitable trades are usually systems that either trade Imperial Slaves -> Biowaste or Basic Medicines -> Aluminium or clothing. You may need to move locations after a while if the system you're in resolves the Outbreak status and thus no longer needs medicines; I can't remember why the Imperial Slave systems stopped being profitable.

Hope that helps!

Here's a Type-9 Trader build as baseline:




You may need to go to EDSY's new look pate to be able to plug in both Engineer mod and Experimental Effect to see the resulting jump range.

Thanks for the reply Ice. I chickened out and fitted a 6A shield after that last loss and blow me I got interdicted twice soon after so now I'll make do with 720 cargo and always have shields. I can't live without the docking computer even though when it lands at my home station it always scraped an internal structure for 6-10,000 credits every time. Shields have stopped that now. Not sure if it's a bug or what.

I'm guessing my jump range isn't great but I can't be bothered to jump through the hoops needed to get it 'engineered'.

I reckon my build isn't far off that one you posted up except I carry no weapons or defence.I'll compare when I next fire up the game. Should I carry any defence/weapons seeing as I always run from interdictions?

I will definitely be checking out that trade planner,thanks.

If you run, then no sense in bringing extra weight although the jump difference isn't even 1LY. Removing the guns goes from 12.09LY to 12.20LY so, meh?

That isn't my fit, I just whipped that up as baseline to give you before-and-after engineered numbers. The 12LY jump range is really going to hurt and was why I went from trading on a Type-9 to an Anaconda with less cargo but could do the routes in 1 jump instead of two. Maybe you can still do the 19-20LY trade routes in 2 jumps and still do 4-5 round trips per hour? If so, then go for it.

Personally, I'd do the Engineers bit. Going from 12LY to 19LY jump range is just INSANE!

I do notice a few blips on my shields with my docking computer but as I run shields, I've never really bothered to find out if the DC really did scrape the mailslot. My current trader is the Cutter with 720T cargo space too, but I bring weapons along for those silly pirates that think they can take on a Cutter while they're in weaker ships. I've taken down Type-10s, FAS, Eagles, Cobras, Pythons, and other ships while in my Cutter with a full cargo hold but most of the time, this is with Fed Police assistance, especially with the more combat-oriented ships. A little money from bounties never hurt anyone's bottom line!