This CMDR makes Fed rep and credits with one easy trick, anti-board flippers hate him!
Welcome my fellow CMDRs! I'm glad you decided to click on my very click-baity title! Now, I assume you're here to learn how to make some easy credits and get your Rank up with the Federation right? After that sweet, sweet Corvette? Maybe you're simply after the Assault Ship? Perhaps you want a Gunboat that has Ship-Launched Fighter capabilities? Then you've come to the right place! I'm a stay-at-home dad of 3/student so this guide isn't going to be super-awesome, but hopefully it's helpful. There might be better runs out there that give more rep/hr or more credits/hr, some that might even do both. But this is the run I used and it was super-easy and simple.
DISCLAIMER: YOUR MILEAGE WILL VARY, JUST BECAUSE I COMPLETED THIS IN MY TIMELINE DOESN'T MEAN YOU'RE IMMUNE TO A STRING OF BAD RUNS. DO NOT BLAME ME IF THIS TAKES YOU LONGER.
"So 3D", you wonder, "What awesome trick is there to get my Corvette and the fat stacks of credits to deck out that beauty?"
Well, it'll cost you one tiny, little thing…
A piece of your soul…
cue maniacal laughter
ADDITIONAL DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR HOW MUCH OF YOUR SOUL YOU GIVE UP!
No, seriously. Much like any (legitimate) shortcut in this game, it's going to be a grind. Now maybe you do it all in one go, maybe you space it out with a few sessions here or there. That's up to you. I started playing at launch, took a 52-week break, and now I'm back at it and I wanted to have what I should have had through the course of natural game-play. I've played MMO's for as long as I can remember so "The Grind" is nothing new to me.
I implore you though, if you the grind becomes to much, take a break and do other stuff in the game. Don't burn yourself out on E:D trying to get into the cockpit of a Corvette only to lose it on your first outing because you never learned to fly combat in other ships. Me? I've done the grind (finished it last night actually) and I have the capability now to buy a Corvette, deck it out full A-Grade, and have a few rebuys thanks to my grind over the last two weeks. I'm not going to do that though, why? Because there's other stuff to do first, like re-learning combat in a ship that isn't the Python (love that thing by the way). So I'm going to 'take a break' and do Ram Tahs mission first, then I'll unlock some engineers while trying out various other combat ships (Vulture, FDL, etc), THEN I'll start with the Corvette. So even though my grind is done, I'm not risking a 30mil rebuy for another week or two. XD But hey, you do you.
The Specifics:
- Your primary client will be "Federation Unite!", this in addition to any Data missions (to or from FU!) is how you'll be making your rep.
- Other factions will provide you with payouts, at one point i refused to take anyone not with Federation Unite! unless they were offering 1mil+ cr., I would make exceptions if they were close enough and/or they were offering materials I wanted.
- Mission availability is determined by rep with the local faction, the more rep you have the better quality and more numerous missions there will be.
- Mission payout cap is determined by your Explorer rank, the higher your rank is the more likely it is that you'll get higher paying missions. I had one mission offer 1.8mil cr for sightseeing in Sirius atmospherics, the high end of that avg for me was 1.5mil cr with an avg of 1mil cr offered most often.
- The passenger missions make rep, credits, and EXPLORER RANK (hell yea, "easy" Elite!)
- The data run missions make rep
- Both provide you with Cargo and Materials. Prime among these are Biotech Conducters (G5 long/short range mods) and Exquisite Focus Crystals (G5 Charge-enhanced Power Distributors and G5 Shield Booster mods), they also give out Modular Terminals like crazy (if you need them and can store them while doing this, but be aware that keeping them may attract pirates).
- You WILL need to flip your mission board, that is going from "Open -> Solo -> Private -> Repeat" to fill your cabins. I did have a couple of times where I did manage to fill my cabins with Federation passengers on the first go, and others where I had to flip the board numerous times.
"The Loop"
- Your run is New Dawn Station -> Sothis -> Sirius Atmospherics -> Ceos -> New Dawn Station -> Repeat until your souls cries for mercy. Each run can take roughly 15min.
- If you want to include data runs as well only take the ones headed to Newholm Station in Sothis, it's positioned just outside of Sirius Atmospherics. Ignore the ones headed to the other station (easy if you're in a large ship, you can't take them anyways). Newholm/Atmospherics are about 1.6k ls from the star, the Mining Outpost is 3k ls. And I'm not even sure they're in the same direction. Time is money and that extra time ain't worth it.
- I suggest bookmarking Newholm Station and New Dawn station themselves, if you choose not to data run data then set a Bookmark for Sothis A5 and when you get within 1,000ls of the planet, Sirius Atmospherics will appear in your nav-log as a lockable target.
The Ship: You need a passenger-worthy vessel, this can be anything from an Asp, to a Luxury liner, to a Cutter.
- Combat ships – Stay away from these, they don't have nearly enough Optional Internals
- Smaller Multi-role (AspX, etc) – great for starting out, can carry a few cabins
- Larger Multi-role (Python, Clipper, etc) – even better, more cabins = more profit.
- Luxury Liners (Orca, Dolphin, Beluga) – Literally made for passenger missions, however their only benefit is the ability to fit Luxury cabins. During my grind I only saw a small handful of missions requiring luxury cabins and the payout wasn't much larger than most other missions. Some 'em if you got 'em but keep in mind that you're going to be facing interdictions and the distance you need to travel to start.
- Buy the biggest Fuel Scoop your ship can handle and replace a cabin with it, store that cabin and have it shipped to you when you get to Ceos.
Dealing with Critical Mission Fail criteria
- Some passengers are 'secretive', others are 'wanted'. This amounts to one thing, DO. NOT. GET. SCANNED. A few missions will leave you with an unhappy client, but a full payout. Others will have you transporting that passenger for free.
- DON'T DRIVE LIKE A JACKASS. Seriously, keep it under 100 when you're docking and you won't be giving security forces a reason to scan you. Mission-based NPCs will still be after you though, so be prepared to hit Silent Running. Just don't smash into the station or another ship because many passengers don't like hull damage.
- You will need to deal with interdictions by way of Fight or Flight. I often fought because it was nice to break up the monotony of the grind with some light combat. However my shields could only hold up for so long and I didn't buy weapons until I got to Ceos so the only thing I had going for me was MC Turrets. It took 5+min to kill an FDL and unless they were Cobras or smaller I had to run if another ship joined the battle. Which can happen if you have multiple passengers being hunted. Running is a perfectly sound strategy as well. In either case submit to the interdiction so your FSD cools down quicker, deploy hardpoints, and take a few pot shots to break the scan (yes, even if you're planning to run, the scan will complete before your FSD spools back up).
- If your mission NPC shows up at the dock then you can either Silent Run it in (this will break the scan, but after a few seconds they'll rescan you) or you can take a few shots but no more than what you need to break the scan. Some passengers won't approve of you repeatedly breaking the law 3+ times (i.e. getting fined for firing in a no-fire zone or loitering, let alone assault or murder.)
- Ignore everything your missions updates, ALL of them. If it's data then you're going to be hunted or it's a new timeline. If it's a passenger then they either want something (which isn't sold in either Sothis or Ceos) or they're also being hunted.
Things to Note:
- At the time of writing this guide and rougly a week prior, a Player-based group is attempting a lockdown of Sothis/Ceos in an attempt to bring down Sirius Corp. If you're not big on PvP then you may want to consider playing in Private/Solo. I ran their blockade once or twice and I ended up joining them afterwards, in return for safe passage I stop taking passengers and data missions from Sirius Corp.
- Again, your mileage/luck will vary. I've had boards that filled me up on the first go, and other times where I had to flip my board quite a few times. Keep at it.
- Don't grind yourself out of this game, if you're used to it then by all means get on with your bad self. But for newer players (ESPECIALLY newer players), don't dive into this grind. Go and explore the game for a bit first, it has SO much to offer. I know, I know "You can say that because you have a Corvette now". No I don't, I still have Ram Tahs missions to do in my new DBX, and I need to get back into combat mode by using what's about to be my new Vulture and FDL. E:D is a marathon, not a sprint. If you don't have the skill to keep your Corvette, you're going to learn that lesson the hard way and it's going to cost you roughly 30mil cr every time.
Loadouts: post 'em in the comments if you want them added over the course of the next week.
- (213mil loadout, 10mil rebuy) Stock Anaconda but optional internals and weapons are what I used it with. My core internals were different but this will be easier for people to obtain.
See you space cowboy!
