Try flying around, fighting and/or trading some between each mission. This will allow you to garner more $ (either from salvage and loot, or traded commodities).

You can also try going to the EFA sysytem (from one of the jumpholes in each system with a House's capital planet, like New London, New Tokyo, Texas, New Berlin). Once in this system, go dock with the planet Earth, then launch, and hopefully a couple fleets will be duking it out in orbit.
You can just hang around, let 'em pound each other, and then collect the Deep Scanners ($12,000 value apiece ) from destroyed capships and Weapons Platforms. Think you can get around 14 or 16 of these in one launch -- lots of $
And (in my opinion) you deeply consider either get rid of that Patriot as soon as possible, or get some serious powerplant/engine upgrades quickly, as the ship is initially rather underpowered. Again, just my personal opinion.

well upon enterting EFA, i met the unfriendly corsairs and outcasts...in the form of 100 battleships...i cant get past planet mercury without being ripped apart....any suggestions?

Edited by - MrHoTcAkEs on 3/4/2004 5:49:49 PM

Ah. Yes, if your rep is like that with Corsairs and Outcasts, try going out to the middle of a tradlane (in the middle, b/t bases and planets, where you only have to fight a few ships at a time).
Shoot a tradelane ring to make it shutdown, and then destroy a transport, a few freighters, or a few fighters of Navy, Universal, Police, Republican (basically any big corporations that are enemies w/criminals). Run if it gets too hot.

Now for the trricky bit: you will most likely be attacked by the unfriendly crimanals at first, AND the police/big corpoartions will fight if you shoot 'em.
Eventually, however, your rep w/criminals should be come nuetral/white, and they'll help you fight some.

It is a kinda lengthy method, but it DOES work; basically, shoot Navy, Police, Military, and corporations whenever you can get away with it.

~~The most effective way I've found (in addition to above) is to shoot Bounty Hunters EVERYTIME you possibly can: all crimanals hate 'em, and even if you're way-off-the-scale-hostile with BHs, no other factions (house corporations/military) care at all. Try these out

Thanks, will do.

Bounty hunters are my favorite kill early on, better loot and no one cares (I mean NOONE!! lol) But also the xenos are good rep boosters. Most factions pirate or house will smile upon a Xenos being buried and once again, no one will care, meaning the only rep you hurt is that of the Xenos themselves. But they have a better ship flying around in this mod that is a pain in the but because its harder to hit, so sometimes its easier to just kill a few BH as Ro9ue stated.

Chibi

Yeah, that's a good point about Xenos, Chibi. Forgot about them.
Ha, in fact, I forget where I saw this, but someone's sig went something like this: "Xenos- Breakfast for champions" It's true

Hi,
Did you consider trade? I just started a new game, and invested all the money I could collect during the first missions in a freighter. On planet LA or Jupiter research station you can buy the cargo ship from Star Wars (forgot the name). It has cargo hold of 700!
Once you have it, consider trade between planet LA and planet New Tokyo (using the EFA system as a link). Luxury consumer goods from LA, and engine components from New Tokio. Now, I still had problems with pirates and such, but this cargo ship has 3 slots for trusters. Use them all, of course your energy drain will be HUGE, but you can play with the kill engine option. If you encounter enemies, hit the trusters (you can go around 500 speed), kill the engine and switch to turrets in case some ship is able to catch up with you.
If you are willing to play even easier, you can trade luxury food from Jupiter research station to New Tokyo. On this road there are almost no enemy ships.
After collecting enough credits go and buy any ship you like! A bought the Colonial Viper, an excellent choice for early game. I had plenty of fun (especially the first 10 minutes) switching from the heavy freighter to one of the most agile ships in the game.
Hope this helps and sorry for any language mistakes (I am not a native speaker)!
Good flying!

The ship your refering to is called a gallofree. If you like to trade, for around 750k on Junyo and in the Minbari Empire you can get what I call the space trucker... lol... (looks like an 18 wheeler truck) it carries 3000 cargo.
Also there is a trade from jupiter to earth if you want a really fast 'cheat' trade. I call it that because any trade that close and profitable should be ommited because it requires no work and makes you rich in hour or less. That is kinda like cheating in a sense although it was put in the mod for some reason.

Chibi

Yes, it is kind of cheap play to trade using the EFA system as link....I did it because I wanted the money in order to experiment with buying different fighters and components for them.
And also, I finnished the whole game in the "non-cheap" way 6 times already, so I wanted a bit fun
Since the man who posted first sounded a bit desperate to me, well the trade is in the game, why not use it.....
Still, you can have pretty hard time defending your slow, clumsy freighter against X-wings for instance!
Of course I am a bit hypocrite now, since after the first trade course, you can fill the turret slots with cluster missiles and beat the hell out of any enemy you may encounter at this stage of the game.