Material Trader gouges yes, but is a vital resource for me. I use them a lot. Stats say I've done 6,000 or so trades.

Sorry I missed your message Bo. Didn't see it.

Me too, but there is some stuff like IMPROVISED COMPONENTS, CONDUCTIVE CERAMICS and DATAMINED WAKE EXCEPTIONS that are scarce to non-existent in the wild, though Wake Scanning will eventually yield some of the latter... I do scoop up any and all 4's and 5's for trade bait.

S’all good, D. No worries.

Hey Rec, your Inara stuff popped up for me. You're ranked way ahead of me too.

Yeah.. must have been that 30 hour refresh

OK cool, glad it's working now. I've moved up a few hundred spots in the rankings over the past few days. Just gotta hope the others around me are done playing Elite

Hopped on last night for a few hours, did some bounty hunting in the Courier, and flew another sightseeing mission in the Orca. This was a long one, four stops and about 600 ly total. It paid 8 million plus five Biotech Conducters (plus several million in exploration data), of which I had five in inventory so a good haul. I've been really happy with the sightseeing boards I'm getting. Good missions for the most part.

Passenger missions are generally good for Grade 5 rewards. I just don't often have the patience for them

Back in the day, I used to do a lot of Passenger missions. Then, you could make a lot just by stacking transports from Point A to Point B. Now, it seems the large payouts are mainly for sightseeing and the Rich Tourist A to B are less lucrative. If there is a decent Grade 5 Material reward, though, it is worthwhile.

For whatever reason, it always seems Biotech Conductors give the BEST trade ratio at the materials broker, so I usually do take them when offered as a mission reward even at the cost of some credits.

Biotech Conductors don't trade any differently than other G5 mats, do they? Maybe I misunderstand. Of course you get a better return if you stay within the same category. You''ll get a better ratio trading them for another 'Conductive' component like Conductive Ceramics then you will for Electromechanical Arrays, even though both are G3 mats. But otherwise I think it's always the same. Or have I missed it?



I like the sightseeing. It gives me reason to take the Orca out. I see some really cool stuff, since the destinations are almost always interesting and are some of the most beautiful places in Elite. The pay is good too. The four stop one I took last night was about an hour. Probably around 20 jumps or so.

As to the rewards, yeah I've been opting for mats. I've plenty of money. Not as flush as you lot. But enough. I'm usually trading a couple million credits for the five G5 mats when choosing the reward.

No, I think you are right about the Mat trading. Seems I am always short on stuff in that category which is probably why Biotech conductors always seem to be the best value.

Yes, perceived value is something else and I totally understand

People weren't kidding when they told me that the deep core mining fundamentally changed the game. It was overwhelmingly the deep core mining that allowed me to rack up credits so quickly and right now I have a lot more money than I could ever spend since I currently have all the ships I am interested in getting. That can change very quickly though when the carriers come out.

The plunge in Void Opal prices made Laser Mining of Low Temperature Diamonds the more lucrative mining exploit. Core Mining was far more fun, though.. except when I just kept screwing up the optimized charge placement

That's true. I made more money core mining in 3 days than I think I had in a couple years to that point. It made us all flush with cash.

I was looking through my Inara friends' fleets the other day, and one of them, I think JC, has one ship worth more than my entire fleet. So it made us all flush, but I didn't really do anything with it. I bought a Krait (which I used to do the mining), but that's about it. I don't even have an interest-bearing savings account so the money just sits there doing nothing

When did this happen? I think the last time I did a VO run was in December and I was still managing to get 1.6 million per canister.

It was part of the January update that rebalanced the economics of mined commodities.

You can check here to see current prices on things easily:

Mining tool


VO prices down to the 500-600K range.

LTD's 800K-1M

Jan-Feb LTD's could get up to 1.6, and were commonly 1.1, so they have dropped as well.

Thanks for that info! I've been exclusively exploring, material gathering and engaging in combat since January so I've been out of the mining loop for a while.

I did spend quite a bit on that 'vette!

I got lucky and managed to get the prerequisite Fed rank last December when ED had that special event going where you got bonus points for ranking up in the Federation and all Fed ships also had a price discount.

JC, that Vette is not only worth more than my fleet, but all my stored modules too! Recluse has one of those too.

An update on my quest for triple Elite.... I hit 10% Deadly last night. That 10% was almost exactly 300 kills, so 30 kills per point. This will vary according to the target ranks I reckon, but so far it's held true. It took 3000 kills to get from noob to Deadly, and at this rate will take 3000 kills to get to Elite.

I missed that sale Somehow lost interest in ELITE over the holidays. Ended up paying full price (-15% LYR discount) for my 'Vette in January)