The Fine Art of Making Money

[Buzzard]

As a long-time lurker on this set of forums, I've seen some interesting comments on the art of making money (usually through diplomacy -- Tuidjy, in particular).

Though I've played around at making money, I've not become exceptionally good at it.

Clearly, it takes a great deal of income to "chip up" and buff equipment to the highest level. I have the feeling that none of my ships are performing at even close to their full potential.

I'm be curious about the tactics that some of you folks have used for that purpose. Drops and quests only get you so far, evidently.

(As an aside, those of you succeeding with "command zero" ships have my real admiration. That's tough!)

Thanks.

[PixelLord]

You ask such hard questions. All I can say is selling tech to a rich race can net some big bucks. I hope others will chime in.

[DOP2please]

Most my money comes from quests. Once you have a good ship, start a world 10 or 20 lvls higher then you are and go around killing everything you can and cash in the quests. This is also a good way of getting components for your ship and some to sell. Try to avoid bad relations with anyone and don't have good relations past non aggression pack. Start a new world when relations get bad.

If your ship is put together well you should be able to burn the monsters, npcs will be much harder

[Yindo]

Doing quests brings in some credits. Even do quests for enemies as well, just have to avoid annoying your allies too much if you do that. Mostly though I tend to pick up elite, artificat and legendary item drop to sell. If I've already won the sector, I'll take any and all quests that make some easy credits or experience.

[Tuidjy]

This question takes a guide to answer, really. I cannot think of any way to say much that is both useful and concise.

The trick to making huge amounts of money is to shape the sector so that there is a ton of money to be made. Of course, while doing so, I'm not above stopping and picking up the kill quests and loot drops, either.

So, as you are going through with your master plan, take the time to use marines to kill veterans, elites and bosses, and sell the loot.

As for the master plan, the best one depends on the politics in the sector. You cannot force every sector in a particular lucrative configuration, and even when you can, it costs money to do so, thus you really do not want to try to force a particular combination of races into the wrong political situation.

For example, do not base your plan on having the Dryad and Cyborgs fighting against the Pirates and Cortex. It would take a lot of credits to get these two pairs to ally, and they will fall apart as soon as you take your hands off them. Instead, engineer an alliance between the Dryad and the Cortex, and the cheapest way to do that is to get them in a shooting war against the same enemy.

So what are the lucrative sectors? There are many types, and you need to play for awhile to get a feel which one you should be going for. By the way, some sectors just roll a bad combination of races. As a home rule, I play every sector to win, but you may want to leave such sectors if you want to make money as fast as possible.

1) Everybody tolerates everybody. Happens once in a blue moon, usually when the Dryads and Talons are doing the heavy diplomatic lifting, and the other races are peaceful (as opposed to Shadow, Brunt, Fringe and their subraces) Here you are best off questing, and getting a legend win as quickly as possible.

2) No one likes anyone too much - simmering tensions. Here you make money with diplomacy. Make sure you never go to war with anyone whose quests you do not have banked, and try to stop wars with rumors. Here is the way to prosper: have NAPs with everyone.

When two races are about to fight, and they both like you, they will try to bribe you to break the NAPs. Take the cash. When they start shooting, use rumors to make the attacked one to sue for peace. It will fail, but at that point, the attacked one will temporarily tolerate you turning in quests with the attacker. So get paid to attack the attacker, turn in quests to make the attacker like you again, make peace, and use rumors to get the attacker to make peace. So you just got paid a few times, and the pair is at peace again.

Rince and repeat. While the tension are only simmering, complete quests and bank them, so that you have leverage, and so that the races can be rich - the richer they are the more you profit from the wars.

3) Everyone united against an enemy. Those happen because of karma events, or because you engineered it. If the targeted race is a wimpy one, they will probably die quickly. Do not try to help them. You may succeed, but you Won't make much money doing so. Race ships are tough, and killing them is not all that lucrative, especially if you only have one market for the loot. You can't be everywhere, so the beleaguered race's will suffer too much damage when you are questing for them.

The situation is completely different if the target race is an Ancient race, T/O/L, or even a strong standard (Scavenger, Fringe, etc...) that can hold their own in combat. Clear a sector for them, make a pass around each planet to heal the defenders, and clear up the opposition, and go questing. An isolated, beleaguered race has the best quests: colonize and defend, resurrect, unleash bosses/ancients, start plagues and recessions, those quests pay as much as twenty normal quests! The hard part here is not to get a Economic win too quickly, which is why I bank quests until I'm near a fear win, and then I turn in all of them at once, sometimes racking in tens of millions (high level sectors, obviously)

Pff, another long post...

Clearly, there are other sectors - the delivery service sector, the single race kicking ass sector, the tons of kill quest sector, etc... But basically, guys, you need to get a feel for the sector dynamics to really milk the credits.

-----

By the way, an important piece of advice. Rumors work best when you can land on the planet, and talk to people who like you. If you have to broadcast while orbiting an hostile planet and dodging shots from its defender, rumors are costly and inefficient.

In game terms, if you have to use the race relation interface to start rumors, you are doing it wrong!

[Buzzard]

Tuidjy, I appreciate your advice, and the effort you took to write it. I've been trying to distill the general principles involved in this area, and your response gives a somewhat better idea.

There's a good basis for doing some experiments. For example, I can apply what you've discussed to deciding what profile of gates to purchase early in the process of exploring a new sector.

I'm just starting to appreciate the full range of what can be done with rumors in that kind of situation, and sabotage, as well.

Even though one of my ships finally achieved level 100 (last week) just by bashing through sectors, I'm not feeling very "smart" yet (e.g., Brunt and "bash" are synonyms of a sort).

It is a tribute to the designers that Drox is relatively simple to play on a superficial level, but has some interesting depth and complexity.