The best option for quick money is the storage depot's right outside of manhattan. They read on your scanner as 'storage depot' if you have your scanner set to display 'cargo' or 'all'. You can target them and fly right to them from the manhattan docking ring. They appear like big plus symbols (+), and 4 large cylinders or rectangles hang below each of them. Destroying one of the cannisters or rectangles releases 15 cargo you can tractor up and sell, but when you do so the cylindrical or rectangular container will be destroyed, and gone until next the server resets. Additionally, as you shoot at these things, the liberty cops will become hostile and attempt to kill you, until next you dock. The best one to shoot is the middle depot. 15 units of cargo from that can be sold at baltimore shipyard (next to fort bush) for about 9k.

Now this assumes that the depots have not already been destroyed. You will know if they have already been destroyed by the fact that nothing is hanging below the plus symbols that make up the depot carriage. Basically, if they are there, you need to blow three containers up, selling the cargo each time, or just dying if you can't make it away from the cops.

The reason this is a very good idea, is that once you destroy three of the containers, every faction in liberty will be neutral to you. This will allow you to fly directly to Ainu, Hokaido with lux goods from manhattan, and return with cardamine to manhattan for a net profit of 56k or so, all without being shot at. Additionally, if you managed to sell the cargo from three of the center depot containers, you will have more than enough money to buy a rhino before you make the trip, which is going to quadrupal your profits.

If you have finished the game before, but the depots have been blown, you might just consider flying to ainu anyway; dodging the fire of hostile ships. They really aren't that hard to escape from, once you get the hang of it. There is no sense in sticking around new york really. If you have played the game before you should find that the AI is fairly easy to outfly in a starflier. And of course, another great initial money earner is the wrecks scattered about, but there are too many to go into here.

In terms of pure money earning New York-only trade routes a good safe one is probably Fort Bush <--> Pittsburg, carrying Pharmecuticals to Pittsburg and boron back. Its very good (if not the best 'safe' run) considering the distance of one tradelane apart. If you dont care about flying around hostile ships, then run cardamine from buffalo base. I really don't reccomend trading within New York though.

I like to a variation of Gun_Ho's cardamine run to Ainu. Usually, I head right to New Tokyo in am empty starflier and buy luxury consumer goods there. I take those to Ainu and then buy Cardamine at Ainu, which I take to Roppongi (The station outside of Planet Tokyo). If you can get to Tokyo, you are home free, because all the faction in New Tokyo and Hokkaido start out neutral. Once i get enough cash, I head back to New York and do some rep fixing to get the Dromedary. I get some decent guns and start raiding transports. If you can fix up your rep enough, a great place to raid transports is at Freeport 1 in Omega 3. Gold, Engine Components, and other assorted commodities sell well there, and all these commodities can be found in passing transports. I can make about 2 million in one hour with a buddy helping me out. We each got 2 million, so if you are alone, you should get closer to 4 million in one hour.