Making Money In 2.2: Skimmer Missions
30 Oct 2016Gamer_ish
Take 2: my internet died after I almost completed the post 
This post follows on from my original post collating my research on how to make money after the long-distance hauling/smuggling nerf. I recommend you read it first:
http://inara.cz/cmdr-logbook/27330/14424
This post is about skimmer missions from Naitis. In my original post, I said that you have to go to Okorafor dock (an outpost) to get these missions but you can also get them from Ford Dock in the same system, meaning that you can take any ship to do these missions.
Even a sidewinder
All you need to do is fit some dumbfire missile racks to your ship and have horizons and you're good to go.
Please note:
You will gain bounties in the Cupinook system
You need Horizons
You need to be allied with the factions to get the best missions
This method requires you to cycle through the mission boards
There are 5 factions in Naitis:
Wolf 406 Transport & Co (Alliance)
Naitis General Holdings (Federation)
Naitis Values Party
Naitis Alliance Bridge (Alliance)
Naitis Purple Boys
Don't bother increasing your reputation with the Naitis Purple Boys; they don't give skimmer missions. As a side-note, doing the skimmer missions for Naitis General Holdings increases your federation reputation nicely
The missions you want to take are skimmer missions to
Lanier Prospect
Crown Settlement
Burroughs Installation
Zetford Horizons
Ignore the other missions and don't worry about crown settlement being alligned with the alliance; doing the missions for Wolf 406 Transport & Co and Naitis Alliance Bridge more than offsets this.
Accept all the missions going to these places, then exit to main menu and relog until you have a full mission log of skimmer missions. Now the fun part!
Travel to Naitis and go to Lanier Prospect first. There are no defences. As you get to about 300m from the settlement, 3 skimmers will spawn. Blow them up, then go to the main menu and go back on so that the settlement respawns the skimmers. You will have to do this up to 4 times as some missions require you to blow up 12 skimmers.
Now go to Zetford Horizons and do the same as above. You'll notice that your missions for Burroughs Installation are completing at the same time so there's no need to go there! (Burroughs also has a security ship stationed there so its a bit more risky)
Now off to Crown Settlement for the last set of missions. You have to be below 20m from the ground in the centre of the settlement for the skimmers to spawn. 3 will spawn which you can kill but 3 little disk things also spawn which also count towards the mission. If you kill these too, you'll only have to relog once to kill the 12 skimmers needed for some missions.
Once you're all done, head back home to collect your hard earned cash!
Once I was fully allied with the factions, I started to see missions paying up to 5m and I got 30-50m per run. You can see the dramatic spike in my credits log on my inara profile. The downsides are that the mission stacking takes a while and isn't very fun. I suggest watching YouTube to alleviate the boredom.
I hope this guide helped, please shiny it if it did!
Once my bounty in Cubeo evaporates, I will be researching the passenger missions there. If you're interested in finding out how good they are, you should subscribe to my logbook
Good luck commanders!