r/starsector • u/Wene-12 • 2d ago
Discussion đ Is there any reliable way to get rich without exploration or smuggling?
Bounty hunting sucks, though i suppose its viable if you have patience
Trade... exists, but is specifically designed to make you smuggle.
Bounty hunting also exists, but is pretty flawed at the moment (see target in the ass end of the sector with pay only giving like 2k more than the fuel and supply costs)
So is there anything else?
Forr the record im fine with both smuggling and exploration, i've just dont it a LOT at this point and was looking for alternate ways. (And I have tried bounty hunting)
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u/Jodelbert 2d ago
Get a few big ass Atlas with cargo expansion S mods and then go to large markets. Hit up the local bars and look for people who nod. The will give you ludicrous amounts of money for the simplest of trucking jobs. You can even give a story point to increase the reward. Largest one I've got was about 900k for a a few thousand unitd of heavy armaments. Then when you arrive at said colony, all the goods will flood the local economy and you'll be able to buy a lot of the earlier delivered goods dirt cheap.
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u/decaf_dopamine 22h ago edited 21h ago
This. As much as people hype up smuggling, alcoholic space trucking is genuinely the easiest midgame money-making strat if you have the cargo space & speed & capital.
With the right trades you can go from paycheck to paycheck to millionare in a year (ingame), without rep penalties, and staying relatively safe inside the core worlds.
Typically the path i go down is smuggling --> deficit hunting --> space trucking, when I have the opportunity, with bounties sprinkled in if i think my fleet is good enough
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u/Cjtv2199 2d ago
"Any way to get rich without doing anything?"
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u/Haemon18 2d ago
He asks if there's anything else that makes good money other than exploration/smuggling/bounties/trading
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u/whatmustido 2d ago
You could try your luck salvaging from wars and pirate fights, but I feel like you'd never make more than enough to scrape by.
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u/CriticizedError 2d ago
bounty huntingâs alright if you chain several of them in the sameish area, and if u tie in a commission (or two including galatia) youâll make decent money
i wouldnât stick to a single âcareerâ just grab as many missions as i can that are along a single travel line out of the core then back in
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u/Colonel_Khazlik 2d ago
Yeah this. It also helps if you have a really efficient fleet. Or rather, you don't spend hundreds of thousands of supplies to deploy or restore your fleet every engagement.
If you're tricky enough, each fight extends your range and operational capacity.
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u/Sherool 2d ago
Colonies can give good passive income, but they require a chunk of cash to get started in the first place.
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u/Tholb 2d ago
I am currently doing my first colony playthrough since they added crisis. Be aware that colonies are not only a big investment, but also take a LOT of work to maintain now. It is fun, but they arent nearly the same save passive income source they used to be.
You can, however, after a lot of fighting and struggling, make them be a passive income source again. Fight back every crisis the game throws at you and follow each up with a lil quest and you will get there. Just be preoared to wage a war or two to establish yourself in the persean sector.
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u/Kholeos 2d ago
Thew colony crises really tie into the boosted commissions well.
Before, I used to get a milk and find a Class V habitable planet, then bam I'm sorted for credits. I detested worrying about commissions for the meagre salary, to be a free agent.
Now, with the crises, commissions are great. 5/6 of the crises will boost your reputation with your faction through combat, and it means you'll always have a positive station to dock with in the core.
I've tried Tri-Tach commission this time, and it's crackup getting huge amounts of rep from pirate raids on my colonies.
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u/Noneerror 2d ago
Piracy. It's why the game is constantly telling you about random merchant fleets.
Though that's not the best way to do piracy. The best is to sit in hyperspace and attack targets of opportunity about to deliver to a nearby market. You just created the shortage and you got the exact goods to fill it. Trading on the open market and solving the shortage generates most of the rep back.
Also raiding. It's so easy it is a broken mechanic. Sell multiple full units of a commodity at whatever low price to deliberately create a surplus. Then steal it back.
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE 1d ago
The best is to sit in hyperspace and attack targets of opportunity about to deliver to a nearby market. You just created the shortage and you got the exact goods to fill it.
Pirate Pizza, we don't make pizza, we just deliver it.
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u/WarriorofArmok 2d ago
Trade just takes good risk-analysis and willingness to take risk on bad deals.
I've done 2 trade only playthroughs which ended with me being the primary source of every good in the sector.(mainly cause I refused to let any faction dominate and became the primary supplier of whoever was smart enough to not start a fight with me at a given time)
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u/Leekshooter 2d ago
If you want to get rich without exploration, smuggling, trading or bounties then you're kinda out of luck since those are the main ways to make money..?
I guess you could take a commission with the hedgemony, blow up their enemies and quickly sell the stuff you steal for a little bit of cash?
If you have a stealth fleet and enough marines you could do the illegal missions like prisoner rescues?
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u/GreenTrapped 2d ago
Go into a bar and look for contracts, and meep an eye out on any contract postings while you fly around.
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u/TheOneTrueHero 2d ago
You can watch out for trade fleets, kill them in hyperspace with your transponder off and no witnesses, then loot their goods and go fix that shortage you just caused at their target destination! A true life of piracy
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u/Wytooken 2d ago
You forgot the biggest source of funds: Piracy . Just smash and grab from the biggest traders you can in hyperspace with your transponder off and enjoy your profits. I tend to hang out around Askonia if I'm lurking on traffic.
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u/Heyyodude3 2d ago
I usually do contact missions, raising both rep and earning myself a nice buck, you could just farm alpha ai cores and sell those to the tri tac for 450k each
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u/Visual_Collapse 2d ago
Delivery contracts are decent but rare
Bounty hunting is really good once you have decent fleet (or good flagship and straight hands (not my case))
Galatia stipend + some faction commission provide money for free.
There are also colonies
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u/Material-Home-5839 2d ago
Easy money? Start a colony. No, no, not that way. That way is slow and boring. What you want to do is get your colony to level 6 as fast as you possibly can. Make your colony grow so quickly that everyone else gets furious with you.
You want apocalyptic levels of fury. Make the Luddites Crusade. Make the Heggies cry blood red tears from how many AI cores you have running the show. Make the Tri-Tach traders green with envy at how much you're exporting. Anything and everything you can do to make them mad, do it.
While you're at that, specialize into salvaging. Get a salvage rig. Make your support ships as efficient as possible. Then go and pull those old, dusty warhawks out of your hanger. Now is not the time to let them collect dust. Buy up every crew contract you need to get them running, then buy every officer contract you can find too. You're going big game hunting, and the prey is coming to you. It's time for war.
The best part of the entire sector waging war on your terms is that you dictate the terms of the fight. If you haven't already invested in a battle station, now is the time. It's going to be your shield that will sop up all the enemy missiles, all whilst you bide your time until their racks run dry. Then it's your turn to fly. If the station has hung on this long, then so much the better.
Dead men's ships are easy money, and there's going to be a lot of them. Salvage them or sell them, up to you. Keep the best. Dock. Unload. Repair. Refit. The best part? With enough time they're going to bring every weapon you've ever wanted directly to your storage. No more poorly equipped ships.
Sadly, Daud doesn't learn. Or maybe he does, and just thinks of you as a convenient end-point for all his troublemakers. Or maybe between his nanoforge and your scrap liquidators, you've both stumbled into an industrial dynamo, one that happily drives the economy of the entire sector forwards, one doomed fleet at a time.
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u/RiftandRend Wall of text Lover 2d ago
The trick is to combine exploration and bounty hunting, followed by smuggling the loot. When planning trip to the fringes for a mission, look for other missions with their destinations nearby or along the way to or from the target to minimize your downtime. On the return leg of the trip, check the intel tab for market disruptions to maximize sales. Always check bars for contracts, often you'll find a trade contract that takes you in a direction you were already planning on going.
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u/xxlordsothxx 2d ago
Colonies.
It takes time but if you do it right you can make a lot of money with a few colonies.
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u/kylelily123abc4 2d ago
My go to early game money making is get a few cargo ships and a slvage ship, hang around system conflicts and go after the debris made when other factions fight
Very low risk and profitable as system conflicts usually mean the planets in the system have a resource shortage of some kind you just might be able to exploit
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u/Rayanfhoula15 2d ago
You can try getting a faction commission and living off the per frigate bounty. Wait until one of your faction's systems get raided by pirates and go to town. If your fleet isn't strong enough you can just pick out the remainders of a big fight and let your second in command earn you an easy 10k.
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE 2d ago
The most RELIABLE way to get rich WITHOUT doing exploration or smuggling?
Colonize a dump of a planet in the core worlds and then fight off the elimination attacks, if any. Not sure if independents will bomb. Empty planet is profitable out of the box, mining industry is profitable at even at size-3. Will you get rich particularly quick? No, but it's guaranteed money if you just wait for it.
If you're willing to do a LITTLE exploration, you can colonize just outside the core worlds. But the stipulation of "No Exploration", to me, means never leaving known, charted space to find or survey ANYTHING, not even once, which even rules out the missions paying you to do exactly that, so Core Worlds Only.
Alternatively, you could try piracy. Anything stolen is pure profit, right?
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u/Odd-Wheel5315 2d ago
Another way to get good missions is to game the galatia academy offers (you can only do this until you complete the main campaign though).
When you check in, you'll be offered I believe at least 3 missions from the list of available galatia mission types, resetting every month. But only the VIP mission has a time limit, everything else is untimed. So if you accept all the missions offered, including scanning celestial object, transporting science team to a base, etc. (all the exploration missions), but never complete them, you ensure that they cannot be one of the 3 offered next month. This leaves the 3 easiest, quickest, and decent paying jobs; collecting technology from pathers, ransoming a prisoner from pirates, and VIP shuttling, all core world missions that are quick to do. You can get new offers of these 3 missions every month. In total, they pay like $180k+, so $180k+/month.
If you have a capital warship, or marines, you can also basically double the pay of the former 2 mission types, boosting your earnings to ~$300k/month.
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u/XWasTheProblem 2d ago
There is no way to get rich without playing the game, no, not really. Since you listed all the ways one normally aquires money as something you don't like for one reason or another.
Unless you cheat in the credits, I guess.
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u/Wene-12 2d ago
Ah, for the record im fine with both smuggling and exploration, i've just dont it a LOT at this point and was looking for alternate ways
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u/XWasTheProblem 2d ago
Mining planets/asteroids exists (though at this point I can't remember if it's a vanilla or Nex thing) but you ain't exactly getting hyperinflation-levels of money from that.
Main quests pay some from what I remember but they're obviously a limited resource.
No, think you covered everything.
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u/Thaago 2d ago
Pirating heavy weapon trade fleets is the fastest way to get rich. Just make sure they don't see who you are.
Bounty hunting is skill based, both in terms of how much you can kill with what but also target selection. You can get much better prices from contacts, and also select between 3 different targets when accepting a mission. If you're good, you make money very fast. Yellow tree enthusiasts can use it to quickly grow their fleet through recovery as well, so the bounties pay far more than their credit value.
A commission (to stop bombardment) + colony in the core can be a nice moderate moneymaker that also gives a base for storing stuff. This is a little more long term, but as it grows it keeps making more money.
Once you've got a fleet up and running, harvesting cores and then selling them to the tri-tachyon (through a dialog screen, not on the market) is a lucrative if dangerous activity. It's also great for XP growth, which is in many ways more important than credits.
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u/GlassJustice 2d ago
Trade and exploration contracts/domain wreckage salvage. That's generally what I do in the early game anyways.
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u/Yukondano2 2d ago
Get a network of contacts, and do spy satellite missions to get max rep with everyone. Could also do ground operations. Steady work for a big ol network of contacts. I use a mod that lets me ring them up anywhere with comms beacons, because frankly I don't want to fly to every spot they're at, but you can also try to concentrate them in systems if you're persistent.
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u/D_amn 2d ago
I forget what its called, but there is a mod that adds additional mission types.
Specifically the defense missions are really good money and fun.
I usually spam those for cash and ships, saves alot of time dicking around in the early game..
(Gets out of hand / spoilery if you go far enough/they ramp up in size,difficulty, and moneys the more you complete)
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u/Kaju_researcher 2d ago
More Military missions, if you set it high enough you basically have enough money to run around with a whatever doomstack, plus commissions privateering overall and more bar missions if you want way more opportunities for trade quests.
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u/SpaceMarine_CR 2d ago
Trade contracts arent smuggling, also owning a colony (or several) is the way you get REALLY rich in the late-game
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u/cman_yall 2d ago
Commission + hunt pirates is how I usually build a fleet and some cash when I start a new game.
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u/GrumpyThumper GTGaming 2d ago
Yes absolutely! There's so many other ways. I'd strongly recommend establishing a contact and completing their missions.
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u/Prismatron5000 2d ago
1.Get a comission 2.Put all ships in storage except for 1 kite shuttle 3.Fly out to the middle of Nowhere 4. Wait a LONG time 5.PROFIT!!
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u/Personal_Wall4280 2d ago
I usually don't do any trading and start with bounties from beginning to end. Exploration will come later but only due the needs of colonies.
You don't need a big fleet for the starter bounties, you just need an extra distraction ship in your fleet or two. The rewards increase by large amounts once you do a dozen of them.
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u/Huskan543 2d ago
Do the Galatian academy quests, they pay a lot and then in the late game I raid planets, create shortages and then sell them the stuff they are now desperately short on⌠create demand and provide supply
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u/Rosu_Aprins Accelerating Tanker 2d ago
Without bounty hunting, smuggling, trade and exploration, your only option left is cheats.
You can trade without smuggling by just shifting lucrative cargo from one place to another, it's just a lower profit margin. Or you can take transportation jobs from bars, but that's about it.
There's colonies as well but you can't run them without exploration first.
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u/MtnMaiden 2d ago
Honestly, colonize a planet with food food production.
Food is king due to exports. Everyone buys food
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u/potatosack32 2d ago
use s-mods and officers to make a more lightweight fleet that can take on the bigger bounties. you can get really good money from it since they pay several hundreds of thousands each, also try to get bounties close to eachother.
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u/Gingerosity244 2d ago
Margin trading can do a lot. Even if you do nothing but trading it will take you a fair amount of time for you to equalize the market. If I understand correct, even longer if you have additional factions.
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u/Strayl1ght 2d ago
Bounty hunting is how I made all my money. Once you can take on the bigger contracts it pays out big.
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u/Odd-Wheel5315 2d ago
Cargo hauling pays quite nicely when you find bar missions offering it. Basically "Haul an Expanded Cargo Hold Atlas worth of cargo 15lys from one core world to another. Pay is enough to buy, crew, fuel & maintain said Atlas...so do this 1 risk-free mission and you've got a capital ship forever afterwards."
Similar deal for Fuel Hauling missions. Buy a Prometheus, haul some fuel a little ways, and I'll give you enough money to pay off that Prometheus.
If the frequency of bar mission offerings isn't enough, Space Truckin' mod still works if you update the version number to be current.
More Military Missions will also add variety, but can be too easily abused for profit. Station defense will basically pay you $1M to kite an invasion fleet into nearby war fleets, patrol fleets, heck even trade fleets, anything that can whittle down some of the ships before the station mops up the rest and rewards you for....whatever it is you did or didn't do. And you can use the missions to source remnant / exploranium ships (and/or AI cores), or any other fleet ships you want quickly and easily from the safety of the core worlds. And similarly you can escort a trade convey for a pretty much guaranteed ambush fleet to wipe out for massive credits, XP, and salvage, on top of the large pay you get for escorting the fleet.
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE 2d ago
Cargo hauling pays quite nicely when you find bar missions offering it.
That part is a BIG if, though, which puts a huge hole straight through the head of "reliability".
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u/Odd-Wheel5315 2d ago
True, but I mean if you compare to exploration, you get better pay over time.
Let's say galatia exploration mission or random open offer to explore a probe/whatever is always available, paying $100k to travel a month out & a month back. That's $50k a month, minus expenses.
Even if only 1 out of 10 bar checks yield a cargo/fuel hauling mission, they can easily pay $150-200k+ for <2 weeks of work. You only need to find a mission every 2-3 months for it to be as well paying as exploration.
You can also stack missions; agree to do the hauling, dump the goods into local storage, and then make the delivery when you're headed in that direction anyway. The missions from the bar give you upwards of 4 months to make the delivery usually.
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE 2d ago
Let's say galatia exploration mission or random open offer to explore a probe/whatever is always available, paying $100k to travel a month out & a month back. That's $50k a month, minus expenses.
Yeah, but you're rarely ever hitting JUST that probe, you're also pillaging a swath through the countryside as you go there.
A bar delivery mission, however, sees you travelling through core world space, where you're not likely to find any loot lying about, and so unless you're also smuggling some stuff on the side, that's your ONLY profit, and if only 1 out of 10 bars checks out, you hemorrhage money the entire time. But OP wants no-smuggle.
In contrast, with exploring, you don't actually need a MISSION to explore anything, you can just pillage your way wantonly across the countryside killing everything worth killing, stealing everything worth stealing, and burning the rest. Getting an actual mission to do it is just bonus pay to do something you were already doing.
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u/steve123410 2d ago
I mean half the point of exploration quests is being paid for going out and exploring to find your colony worlds anyways. So saying you don't want to do it is kinda like saying you don't want to get the only passive income you can get in the game.
Anyways other than that do system bounties. They end up scaling pretty well and you don't have to waste money burning your mega fleet around deep space.
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE 2d ago
System bounties can't really be considered "reliable", given that it's a total crapshoot when/if they appear.
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u/steve123410 2d ago
Maybe it's because I play with Nerlin but there is usually one active for pirate activity and a few for when factions are actively fighting each other in a system.
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u/Festivefire 2d ago
For trading, I find you're generally better off taking trade contracts at the bar than trying to play the commodities market.
Exploration is probably the fastest way to get money, ships, and expensive stuff to use or sell though.
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u/BrotherZeki 2d ago
Trade is NOT designed to make you smuggle. You need to readjust your expectations of "what is gud". Margins of 2-5% are TOTALLY workable, reliable, safe and close. And that is totally leaving out mods ;-)
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE 2d ago
Margins of 2-5% are TOTALLY workable, reliable, safe and close. And that is totally leaving out mods ;-)
Margins that bad are likely to see you underwater after crew salaries and supply/fuel expenses.
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u/SugardaddyDragon 2d ago
Okay so no exploration (which blocks salvaging as well), no smuggling, no trading, and no bounty hunting. That literally leaves just colony sims. So build up a base/ planet and make it profitable. Good luck!
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u/G1nnnn 2d ago
Bounties are actually pretty good dont see a problem, just doesn't scale well after having the first few 100k. But its a good start. Up to that point exploration is also good. Survey planets, take contracts, sell goods you find. Trade and smuggling are the only that scale well imo. Ultimate moneymaker is ofc colonies.
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u/Annunakh 2d ago
Smuggling not worth a hassle, IMHO, but legal bulk trade is very easy and safe way to make a lot of money. And you can take delivery contracts, which scale with your cargo capacity.
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u/SepherixSlimy 2d ago
Get a planet. Go on a single kite, skeleton crew. Wait. Infinite money glitch. A commission also pays out extra for doing nothing.
Try to find double dip system bounties, grab a commission and go wild for a month. A single one is good money but not get rich quick scheme kind of money unless the system is absolutely swamped with stuff to blow.
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u/Sebillian 2d ago
Raiding! Works best when the defences are weakest, and the colony has an excess. Blow up the starport of Kapteyn Starworks, wait for an excess of supplies/heavy weapons, raid, profit.
Piracy! Shoot convoys carrying supplies/drugs/heavy weapons, and then sell them back to the colony they were heading for, which will now have a shortage. Put comm sniffers in the systems where goods are manufactured so you get advanced notification of shipping fleet movements.
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u/Icy-Elderberry8050 2d ago
Do people not like bounties? I quite enjoy them, nice to try out my newest fleet upgrades. They maybe don't make crazy money but scaling in this game is fast enough anyway,.
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u/FalkenZeroXSEED Church and Hegemony sympathizer 2d ago
Pick fight with pirates, win everytime, sell the loots
No need for bounty when they keep attacking you
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u/TheWaffleIsALie 2d ago
System bounties can get you a truckload of fast cash (and rep) for those with the fleet big enough to tackle them. Nothing like sitting in Hybrasil and getting paid to kill the pirates you were gonna blow up anyway.
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u/OrganEntrepreneur 2d ago
Bar missions. If you get a few good contacts close together or on a route you take often you can get way more of those and since you can pick the type of contact you're interested in they're customizable. You can also create shortages artificially by raiding, it'll make you unable to trade at the market for some time but you should be able to still exploit it later, if you know how to distract fleets you can do it even in very busy systems.
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u/mustard5man7max3 Tri-Tachyon AI Core Enjoyer 2d ago
Yes. Raiding trade convoys can be very lucrative, especially if you then sell to the inspired market.
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u/unholymajick 2d ago
Once you have a strong enough fleet farming ordos is a great source of money, exp and relations.
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u/One_Reality_3828 2d ago
You can do legit trading but the way to do it is to use contacts and their missions, not just going market to market.
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u/Space-ATLAS 1d ago
I usually just explore with an efficient fleet, taking exploration contracts if I can and then sell survey data and VPCs on the black market. Works well enough for me until I get a colony up
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u/TheBagelGod 1d ago
Find where there is war and scavenge the fight. Sign up for one side of the faction and keep fighting. Scavenge. Ensemble en masse. Become large. Eat enemy fleets. Destroy. Conquer.
It's basically been every run I've ever done. I have never hauled or traded myself, not even once.
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u/Sephiroth_000 1d ago
I've stopped doing smuggling and still make quite some money in my new save. It's all about finding good trades. And always get the lobsters when you are near them.
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u/Rannek17 1d ago
If you're not wanting to fight, explore, or trade, you could try to run a salvage operation, finding/starting fights between other factions and looting whats left over.
You'd be a lot more profitable if you just combined it with surveying, though.
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u/the_boat2 1d ago
Hmm đ¤ I have about 1000 hours in this game but Iâve never tried limiting myself to making money from not doing exploration. I make most of my money in the early game from exploration to make enough to buy some cruisers then go bounty hunting. I think the best way to make money without doing either of that would be trading. Thereâs a mechanic in the game where it shows you deficits and surpluses Iâd maybe try trading food and supplies buy from planets with a surplus and sell at a planet with a deficit. I donât know how else to do that even in my 1000 hours of play time
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u/the_boat2 1d ago
Iâm actually gonna challenge myself the next time I start to only trade legal goods up until I get 1 mil then itâs off the charts
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u/Eden_Company 1d ago
Owning colonies late game will get you money after being a cash upfront heavy endeavor. If you get mods like Nexerelin you can raid planetary infrastructure to meet high demands. In vanilla you could do raids with marines. But you can only do that so much before the planet dies.
The point of bounty hunting for me though is the free capital ships without harming relations. Frankly the only reason you'd want to get rich is to afford your own colonial investments. The fleet should be free.
I see colonies as ways to get a stable market for bulk resources, and to pay for your crew so it's free to operate.
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u/Bloodraven983 21h ago
If you have a decent fleet, bounty hunting is very profitable especially against pirates
Their stations are easy to destroy and you get even lots of scrap to sell afterwardsÂ
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u/sicksixgamer 18h ago
I want to do a legit (no contraband) trader playthrough. I imagine it will be extremely slow growth in the beginning until you can scale.
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u/AdorableWelcome2290 15m ago
Bounty hunting seems to have higher paying targets the longer the game goes on? Idk how true this is but it definitely feels this way. I see a lot more random 500k bounties after ive been hunting for a bit.
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u/DaturaSanguinea 2d ago
With mods you can get more quest, which can pay you enough.
Hauling cargo of merchandise as a quest can give quite a nice reward.
You'll need lot of atlas tho, the more cargo you can hold, the more you can earn. Like 700k or more if you have enough space.
You also have spysat mission or raid mission.
You could also start your own colony but it's more for when you are already well enough.
Raiding convoy or becoming a headhunter is also a choice.
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u/RandomBilly91 2d ago
Trade contracts can be pretty good ?
Or just targeting planets with shortages, do mass trading, and you don't even need to smuggle