In New York between Buffalo and the Texas jump hole, also from the other side of it to th eJunkers base. Those two routes give you Diamonds / Gold and Cardamine from most Mules or Daggers. Sell either at Manhattan or the Junkers base in Texas.

Don't underestimate the Dromedary against the Hessians - have you tried it? Or, of all things, a Humpback with its class-7 power. Although if you have the level to buy a Humpy, you could just buy a Drake or Stiletto yourself and go fly high-paying missions at somewhere like Cadiz.

Cardamine and Diamonds from Rogue Mules in Manhattan is a decent idea too, although it's pretty unreliable. I've camped Buffalo and Rochester and waited 10-15 minutes between Mules sometimes. And don't try this on a PvP multiplayer server.

Mining gold from Mollys (or watching them "mine" themselves, heh) was the suggestion I was thinking of before I saw it at the end of your post. It actually isn't all that far to Tripoli Shipyard to sell the gold. Six systems, two on trade lanes; and all the jumpholes in the Omega-5/Omega-41/Omicron Gamma sequence are pretty close to each other (30k max and some are like 10k) because those are small-scale systems. This trip in a Drom gets you north of $400k.

Or you could pop over to Southampton Shipyard one system away in New London where the gold does sell for $476. A full load of this in a Drom is still worth more than a HF full of Niobium.

Although, what's the point, really? It's effectively doing commodity trading anyway, just with a really inefficient means of acquiring the goods. You may as well land on the Hood and buy the gold.

I'd probably suggest ditching the commodities idea and just going with the steady income of the highest paying missions you can get at any given time. Even a Defender with torpedoes can knock off Large Space Station or Weapons Platform missions in no time flat. And you know a Stiletto or Drake can handle just about any random mission in the game.

Tips for random missions - use a base off the tradelanes and all the missions will be within 18k distance or so cutting travel time. Alternatively, use a base on the tradelanes, and on your way back keep an eye out for juicy targets to pirate (and be ready to find another base. )

Just have to find the highest paying missions you can take at any given time. I've looked in the INIs to try to figure out exactly how that works. The difficulties offered by each base are given in Data\Missions\Mbases.INI; I could post a list if you like. I don't know exactly how the character level translates to being allowed to accept particular missions, though.



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One other thing - storage depots drop goods that aren't limited by your net worth either. The middle of the three depots at Manhattan drops 15 Polymers from each of the four containers, and those sell for $438 over on Baltimore Shipyard. The farthest one (towards Detroit) drops 36 Hydrocarbons from each pod which sell for $240 right there on Newark although you have to leave the area to reset Newark once it goes hostile; hopping right over to dock on Detroit usually does the trick.

And there's a depot at Norfolk Shipyard (the "upper" one) which has 16 H-Fuel per pod. You know where to sell that.

All these commodities total more than enough cash to get a Crusader with a load of Starkillers or a Drake and get started on the higher paying missions. Also, instead of resetting Newark, you can sell the Hydrocarbons for $200 on Pueblo or $280 on LPI Sugarland on your way out of Liberty.

Of course this only applies if the depots are still there. But I suspect you're running a local MP server on your own machine.

There's also looting wrecks of course but I'm guessing you want to stay away from that, since one trip through Sigma-13 gets you half a million of net worth.


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Edited by - T-hawk on 21-07-2003 07:14:57

Well, the basic problem is this: early in the game you cannot get decently-paid missions because of level restrictions and you don't get good weapon loot drops either because you have to be worth at least half a million before that becomes lucrative. Also, early in the game one's rep sheet leaves a bit to be desired (Corsairs start 65% hostile), and mining Red Hessians for niobium or Mollys for gold takes care of both things - it earns nice money and it improves the standing with the Corsairs and a number of other factions.

Buying a bribe is a pretty drastic way of adjusting one's rep but buying a Corsair bribe and flying a dozen missions out of Cadiz and Leon (assuming you have high enough level to get missions in the first place) mangles the rep sheet beyond repair. You have to do a lot of pro bono work against Outcasts and/or Mollys after that to repair the damage.

And I find trading utterly boring.

I liked the idea with the Texas jumphole in the NY badlands. To try it out I loaded a savegame from after mission 2, slapped Lavablade kit and a Slingshot launcher on a Rhino and hoofed it to the badlands. The good news is that you can indeed get drops of Cardamine, Diamonds, Gold and occasionally even Alien Organisms, once you get the hang of it. The bad news is that there seems to be a net worth issue after all: the drops where only 6, 7 or 8 units even though the Mules had ten times as much in their holds. My net worth was about $50k at the beginning of the session and $90k near the end.

This jolted a memory from the SP campaign(s) where the gunboats dropped up to 30 H-fuel each during my first run and the fun run - where I was worth millions - but only about half a dozen units during other runs where I had just barely enough money to afford adequate kit. As a test I loaded a savegame with a max-level Eagle that was parked near NY and took it to the Texas jumphole. I scanned the ships and watched the drops: this time the Daggers and Mules reliably dropped everything they had in their holds ...

BTW, I don't think a Drom can hold out for long near the Dresden jumphole in Frankfurt since there you have to deal with up to 8 Stilettos. The Drom has the powerplant/armour of a Drake and the manoeuvrability of a Titan; Catapults could be used instead of torpedos (as insurance against swarms) but they cannot match the bang/buck ratio of the Starkillers. Even for a class 6 heavy fighter it can get hot occasionally because sometimes you get inbound groups of enemies from all sides (== impossible to dodge the fire of all of them) and so you may have to touch the battery reserves.

Yes, there is a net worth check for commodity drops; I'd forgotten about that. It's even in one of the INI files, I can look later if you want.

It's generally based on the nominal value of the commodity, which is why Niobium works; the nominal price for that is pretty low but the local sell prices are very high. In contrast, the nominal price for Diamonds and Cardamine is quite high, so you won't get many from a Rogue Mule in Manhattan. In one of my SP campaigns, I went to Rochester after the first mission; when I launched I saw a Mule full of Cardamine so I whacked it. Wanna know how much it dropped? Two stinkin' units.

The storage depots still don't check, though.

Later, I'll take a look through Mbases.ini again and see if I can work out exactly what missions you can get from what bases at what levels. If we have that information, it's not too hard to keep moving to where the best available missions are.

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