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[Mephansteras]

Safest way to make a bit of easy money is to buy lobsters from Volturn and sell it somewhere big, like Eventide. The markup is usually enough to actually net a profit, unlike most goods.

You can also smuggle stuff using the black market, although that's riskier.

Personally, I generally do easy exploration missions and bounties. Pick up some early cheap freighters and tankers to supplement whatever combat ships you have and look for easy pickings. For exploration you want derelict ships, stations, and planets that don't cost many supplies to scan. Probes are ok, but may be guarded so you'll want to hold off on those until you have a halfway competent combat force. At least one or two actual warships of destroyer size, preferably at least one cruiser. Most probes are unguarded or guarded by a few weak frigates, but they can occasionally have nastier surprises in store.

For bounties, system bounties are ok but I usually just take advantage of them when I happen to be in-system. Otherwise I look for proper bounties on the intel screen that look easy enough for me to take.

[Majestic7]

Running drugs from Tri-Tachyon home world to Pirate or Luddic Path planets in need of drugs is the best way to make early money, I think. Do that a few times to earn enough to fund exploration after bounties/exploration missions, then go from there. Use the commodity prices tool to find out where you get the best prices for the drugs, plus naturally turn off your transponder after leaving Tri-Tach drug den.

You can sell the stuff on black market too, so no taxes. (Since the people you smuggle the stuff to is Luddic Path or Pirates, so it doesn't matter like with other factions.)

[McTraveller]

Yeah I feel like use of the black market is almost mandatory - 30% tariff is ridiculous.  Makes me appreciate living in a state with only 6% sales tax…

I also have to laugh that consumable supplies are around 100˘ but durable people are around 30˘.

And I have to decide how to dig out of my 0-supply hole…

[Frumple]

My go-to early game "trick" lately has just been finding systems that are in conflict and scalping the resultant derelict ships and salvage, heh.

It's made a bit easier by being heavily modded and having the Gundam UC one going -- the system it adds is ours mid OYW, so it's full of mecha and capitals blowing each other up; it's fairly trivial to end up with EFSF's entire capital line just by hoovering up the remains of their attack fleets splatting against solomon or boa qu or whatever -- but it's still fairly viable in the base game... or at least base+nex, I think nexerelin makes the strategic layer a lot more active, which means more invasion fleets and more scrap to loot.

[Great Order]

The game always spawns ships in orbit of Tetra (I think it's called), not just when you play the tutorial. As a result you can easily get a small fleet started up. Head there with a couple story points and you can grab a carrier and cargo ship too. At the very least, it's free XP and resources.

[SOLDIER First]

... almost. Almost done with the academy line and kicked the gates back on. Almost.

I am never forgetting to turn off the storyline ever again. I've done this once. I will not do it twice. Gating (ha) things as fundamental to basic transit in this game behind a mess this time consuming is just... no. No, no, nononononono don't do that aaaahhhh

Certified Hyperdrive moment

[AlStar]

You can make some major early game money by running virtually any kind of good into Pirate stations. They're constantly at war with everyone, so their supply lines are totally fucked. It's usually fairly trivial to find a system with a non-Pirate planet that has a something that's at low-to-mid prices that you can buy in bulk, then run over to the Pirates to sell at top dollar. You can combine this with buying illegal goods from the Pirates and running them back, so you're transporting goods both directions; although that can be risky, depending on how many system authority patrols are snooping around.

The only thing you've got to be careful of is:
1) When you're just starting out and don't have a fleet to speak of yet, make sure you don't stumble into a Pirate patrol - they'll pounce on you, if they think they can take you. Stealth and hiding in belts and rings is key.
2) Watch out for regular patrols - if you turn off your transponder while you're still in radar range of them, they'll pursue you to the ends of the system to yell at you.

Oh, and don't be like me - check to make sure there's no Pirate bounty / Pirate raid going on in the system when you try this. A starting fleet does not do well when it hits a half-dozen pirate flotillas. That said, those systems are ripe for Frumple's trick of letting the system authorities and pirates duke it out - either stay at the fringes and pick up the wrecks, or actively join one-sided battles, so you get some +REP as well.

[Great Order]

On the second point, I enjoy turning off my transponder while exiting a system and watching the patrol try to get hold of me. They don't tell you off once you're in international waters hyperspace, so they always follow you through, meander a bit, then leave.

[Sirus]

A fairly low cost way of making money in the early game is to keep a sharp eye open for exploration contracts and nab any that involve locating places or objects of interest (survey probes, space stations, stuff like that). A couple of combat freighters combined with a small tanker can easily fly from the core worlds to the edge of the sector and back again on a single tank of fuel, and after you get paid you can try to loot whatever you were sent to find (not to mention anything else you happen to find along the way) for valuable cargo. If you have the supplies and manpower to spare, you can also accept planetary survey jobs which might help you locate potential places to set up colonies later. Those might require larger crew sizes and therefore larger expenses, so be careful with those.

Just keep an eye on your feed when traveling through civilized space and be prepared to snap up any job (or jobs, if the stars align) that you feel confident of doing. They won't be on offer forever, and if someone else accepts the job first you won't get paid.

[feelotraveller]

Yeah I feel like use of the black market is almost mandatory - 30% tariff is ridiculous.  Makes me appreciate living in a state with only 6% sales tax…

Rule of thumb is that 2500 trade on the black market is safe anywhere with the transponder on (assuming no recent black marketing at this world).  Bigger economies are safe to 3k but learning which and where takes time.  Any tariffed trade increases the ability to safely trade on the black market by something like 10 to 1.  So for every 10k tariffed something like 1k black market becomes safe.  Notably deliveries and procurements - transponder on - count for tariffed trade as well.  For example when I made this delivery



I was able to clean out the black market of supplies and fuel and several hundred organics without raising any suspicion. 

Keep an eye on suspicion by hovering over the black market button - once it hits 'minimal' stop trading there (unless you want to take a risk).

Also worth noting is that once a search is triggered (and made) in a system there is a decent cooldown before it can trigger again.  Go overboard black marketeering before leaving the system!

I also have to laugh that consumable supplies are around 100˘ but durable people are around 30˘.

It's actually a signing on fee.  You need to pay 10˘ wages per person monthly as well.  Though if you store them at an abandoned station they become wage free...

And I have to decide how to dig out of my 0-supply hole…

Running out of supplies is how you lose the game.  (More precisely running out of CR and being engaged in combat but they sort of go hand in hand.)  I would suggest trimming down your fleet by storing ships you might want later but don't need yet and scrapping the dregs you will never want or need for supplies and fuel.  Smaller fleet means less supplies, fuel and crew needed.  Downside is less ability to successfully engage in combat, but choosing your fights is a big part of being successful in this game.

[Loud Whispers]

Phase ships are the A Grade idiots of starsector AI, from what I've seen. It's just... really bad at handling phase cloaking. I'm not necessarily good with them, but the AI is holy shit bad.

Also any kind of high mobility ability they're just... not wise with. At all.

The one exception is the DOOM + an officer with systems expertise. You don't even need to put weapons on the DOOM. It just BRTTTTTTTTTs mines on top of the enemy, pulls out with phase, recharges its mines and does it all over again. It's a terrifying phase mine bukakke machine

If you want to keep with a Stardust Ventures only theme, I'd see if you can find some Storm Heralds. They're pretty tanky in most situations. And, yeah, if you can get a Storm Bringer battlecruiser you'll find that it'll handle almost anything that gets thrown at it. Still a good bit more fragile than something low-tech like an Onslaught, but it's got the speed and shield capacity to get out of bad situations that the slower capitals can't.

Well, based on my general experiences. Never used the Realistic Combat mod, so things might work out slightly differently.

In any case, love the after action reports. Always fun seeing how other folks use my ships!

I think it'll make a good flagship. Still just scrounging up cash and trying to nurture my colony into a proper money-maker. Realistic combat mod is pretty fun - most of the changes it makes are just increasing the rock-paper-scissors elements of the game. It also stealth-nerfs a lot of the auto-healing remnants, since in RCM taking damage lowers CR and so it's actually possible to wear down the CR of teleporting big thick remant battleships. Some of the key changes:

-Everything is much longer range. E.g. laser beams tend to have 10,000 range, ballistics around 4,000 range.
-Everything is much faster, but with much lower acceleration/mobility. This really works in favour of high tech or ships like the stardust where it really trains you how to maintain bearings and keep circling behind frontal-firepower style ships.
-It's a lot harder to always keep your shields up. So you have to dodge, force the enemy away with gunfire or wait for the enemy to run out of flux.
-Armour/hull is ablative instead of being a HP stat. So it's more important to keep your damage focused on one area of the enemy ship than to spread it out everywhere.
-Hits are calculated by the angle they strike on hulls. So a hit that strikes a ship on a 45* angle will do less damage than one on a 90* head on hit. Hulls like the stardust boys that are basically flying triangles helps make them a bit more resilient, whilst a lot of mod ships that add big wings and blocks make them more vulnerable

Need to get the mod that adds explosion size based on fuel carried if you haven't. That'd make it seriously boomy (And add another type of IED ship that relies on the AI being too stupid to get away)

Also the Luddic Path IED submod is glorious

I love that enough people complained about the Luddic Path enhancement mod that the mod maker split the IED mod into its own submod, because they hated how they could be smashing apart a luddic fleet only for a deranged tanker to fly into their capital ship and detonate

Just as Ludd intended

My helm control is awful.

Does this just get better with practice?

Just remember to hold down shift to make your ship automatically follow your mouse cursor, and whilst holding down shift it changes the nature of the wasd keys. So when you hold down shift, instead of rotating your ship, a and d strafe the ship left or right, whilst w and s control forwards/backwards acceleration. Use the c key to reduce your speed.

I would recommend giving the missions a try. The missions helped me a lot, and also I found it easier to start off with big fat slow ships like the oddyssey and then work my way down to smaller, faster ships

Yeah I feel like use of the black market is almost mandatory - 30% tariff is ridiculous.  Makes me appreciate living in a state with only 6% sales tax…

I also have to laugh that consumable supplies are around 100˘ but durable people are around 30˘.

And I have to decide how to dig out of my 0-supply hole…

-Exploration missions in the early game provide flat fees. Place a comm-sniffer in a hegemony or sindrian system with lots of planets. I always make sure the exploration mission is for a place that is marked clearly in the mission, e.g. "an orbital probe orbiting around a gas giant in the xyz system" instead of the more nightmarish ones "a hulk drifting far from the centre of xyz" where you could end up wasting time and supplies.

-If you have a combat fleet and don't care about pissing people off, start targeting smugglers and seizing their cargo in hyperspace. When your combat fleet is large enough, begin targeting trade fleets. You get the double whammy of being able to disrupt the supply of the destination planet, smuggling their own goods back to them at a markup price.

-Bounties, if you care about pissing people off.

-Exploring bars to find someone "with a concerned expression" on their face is a great source of money for those who want to RP as civilian space truckers. As long as you have the storage capacity, you can transport goods at great markup price. The best part is this mission scales with your storage size - if you have loads of atlases, the money potential is huge. Just make sure you're friendly with the destination market first...
Oh yeah, and you can 100% run away with the cargo you're given and sell it yourself instead of delivering it to the marked destination market.

Just uh... Be ready for the consequences.

-Exploit market disruptions and trade imbalances. Nexerellin wars provide lots of disruptions, but even in base game there are a lot of reliable supply issues. Some markets like the luddic church normally have a huge deficit of luxury goods due to their laws, whilst over-producing on food or organics they can't sell. Checking the galactic market and seeing who is overproducing something someone else is in deficit in can let you do legitimate, tax-paying trade whilst making fat profit.

-If you have Nexerellin, rent out a single tiny shuttle. Fly to a planet that is about to be invaded. Buy every single organic, crew, marines, fuel, supplies, domestic goods and heavy machinery. Place them all into storage. If the invading power allows for legal trade of things like luxury goods, drugs, organs, heavy weapons, buy all of the legal ones and place them in storage too. [Don't store anything which is illegal to the new polity, in case the new polity wins the invasion and your illegal goods get trapped in storage - incurring the monthly fee until you manage to bribe a new invasion into seizing the planet to free your goods].

Assuming everything goes to plan, the invading fleet will destroy the orbital station and bombard the planet. At that point you don't really care who wins, just that the war causes enough damage and disruption. This massively increases the demand for the above mentioned goods. Go dark, sneak back into the port (really easy to do with just one tiny shuttle in the middle of a war), taking all of your goods out of storage and selling it on the black market. If you pull off the ultimate war short, you can make over 3,000,000 credits in one day. Even better if your fleet is stored nearby, and after you're done doing black market shorts you use your cargo-haulers to haul legitimate trade of supplies in-system.

[Frumple]

Just remember to hold down shift to make your ship automatically follow your mouse cursor, and whilst holding down shift it changes the nature of the wasd keys. So when you hold down shift, instead of rotating your ship, a and d strafe the ship left or right, whilst w and s control forwards/backwards acceleration.

Do note, there's an option to make that a toggle instead of something you hold down. Helps a lot.

... I haven't, however, figured out if there's a way to just start combat with strafe lock on. There are precious few situations where I want it off, really, and pressing the button to make the control scheme worth a damn every single time a fight starts is mildly irritating.

[Loud Whispers]

Do note, there's an option to make that a toggle instead of something you hold down. Helps a lot.

... I haven't, however, figured out if there's a way to just start combat with strafe lock on. There are precious few situations where I want it off, really, and pressing the button to make the control scheme worth a damn every single time a fight starts is mildly irritating.

For ships with high cruising speeds and low maneuverability it's pretty fun using manual turning/acceleration to better roleplay as a starship captain and not a fighter pilot

[feelotraveller]

Funny thing is I always use the non-strafing (i.e. rotating) option.  When I started playing I was absolutely shite at combat, like most players. A big part of getting gud (well passably, moderate, maybe...) for me was learning to use this control schema.  Also remapping shields and venting to rightclick and middleclick respectively.  But certainly agree that getting used to the controls, whatever flavour and rebindings suit you, is the first step in learning how to pew-pew effectively.  I've found that 'run simulation' is good for getting used to the controls in your current ship, quickly cycling combats against different enemies. Just don't forget that fleet combat brings in other factors.

Separately I've been having fun in my latest vanilla campaign using a couple of tweaks and house rules.  Most notably insisting that I only use scavenged ships and weapons (and hullmods), no buying, no stealing - not sure if I'll allow myself to build them for personal use once I have colonies set up, probably not, we'll see.  Fun to make do the best possible with what's at hand rather than buying an 'optimal' fleet.  Also adjusting the pod officers (via settings.json) down to level 1 (level 3 for exceptional).

Sort of mid campaign, going slow for fun, and I've just moved up from flying a wolf to the medusa.  I prefer to play a more mobile smaller dps ship than the big tank of my fleet (been the venture mkII for a while now).  Smooched up to all the factions for laughs through missions early on and currently engaged for a while to come in the big survey for the best colony location.  I've used the medusa in a previous campaign and quite liked it - this time I'm absolutely loving it  .  Wondering if anyone had tips on my build?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Obviously it's built around the ion pulsers and they are pretty much non-negotiable.  The burst pd's seem so much more effective than pd lasers or lrpd lasers from what I've seen.  The salamanders are the big question mark.  They don't do that much in combat but what I've noticed is that they make the swarms of trash frigates much more reticent to engage.  I've previously tried IR pulse lasers which were nice for that extra pew-pew but often pushed my flux critical (since I leave them on auto). Also tried tac lasers which were good for making enemies not drop their shields when I had to back off to deflux but again pushed my own flux a bit too much since they were nearly always in range.  The lack of flux is why I leave two of the back mounts empty something which hurts my min-max soul but I've come to terms with it.  Given the flux issues (because it's all about bursting) missiles are the obvious go to but I suck at manually switching to missiles and back and auto drains the ammo way too quick.  Thoughts?

Also are some dmods unremoveable?  I've got the top tier industry skill to remove dmods but the venture has had compromised storage for years without it being removed, even though I've run the fleet for months at a time with this as the only dmod.  Several other dmods were removed from this ship but that was years ago.  If I remember correctly the hermes? shuttle you can grab from the corvus abandoned station has degraded engines which never gets removed.  Assuming I'm correct that the compromised storage is unremoveable by perk (presumably I could still restore it - not that I'm going to) how would I know this without having to wait for years seeing not happen?

[Mephansteras]

I'd nix the Salamanders on a primary combat ship. They're much better on support ships, since they're both fairly long range and of limited utility in directly taking out a ship. I'd much rather have Sabots or the like, personally.

If you don't like trying to swap weapons you could try setting the missiles to autofire. Not sure how well that would go, but probably not too bad for something like Sabots which have some tracking and don't get shot down by pd too much.