My first Billion
20 Jun 2017DNA-Decay
Okay This thread hasn't been updated in a while, so here's a thing you can do.This method takes you from day one in a Sidewinder up to the Big Ships via DBX and Asp. Probably a month for all the bits and pieces. There's a system permit to get, and an Engineer to unlock, and a thousand light year journey to take.
Sidewinder to DBX.
Use your Discovery Scanner (Advanced as soon as you can afford one) honk every system and fly to the Old Worlds. Sell your Sidewinder and buy a Hauler. Whenever you sell exploration data always sell one-system-at-a-time. This will affect the BGS more and will increase your exploration rank faster.
Do the Old Worlds Rares Run once, honking all the way. Upgrade your ship, go to the Gal Map and then Show By Colours > Visited, untick visited, tick Apply Filter to Route.
Old Worlds Rares Run map:
Repeat the Old Worlds Rares Run until you can afford a DBX.
9 MCr should do it, for a base DBX like this https://coriolis.io/outfit/diamondback_explorer/0pdtdFflddisdf51e1b1b0202000h48032t2i2f.Iw1-kA==.Aw1-kA==?bn=Base%20DBX
Fly to Wolf 406 and buy your DBX from Hamilton Gateway for the 20% discount. Now you have a DBX and a couple of rebuys.
Once you have a wake scanner on board, get in the habit of scanning wakes wherever you go. Upgrade it to A rated as soon as you can. This will save time later.
Fly to 78 Ursae Majoris and run missions for Alioth Independents until you get the Alioth permit- you'll need it later to buy an Asp at 20% discount at Irkutsk Station in Alioth.
After unlocking Alioth, you should have enough money to buy an SRV, so do that. You need some cargo space and an SRV and both exploration scanners. So you'll need to reconfigure the DBX a bit or sell it and buy an Asp. Maybe you can go without shields in the DBX. Whatever - it's all good.
At this point you can choose whether you need money first or range.
I think Range is more of a game changer, and money will come further down this post anyway, so let's look at Unlocking Felicity Farseer.
Grade 5 FSD Long Range Engineering:
Materials:
Fly down to Dav's Hope:
Do the tourist stuff: scan all the beacons etc, it's good story and fun.
You start by finding the 3 Listening Beacons here:
Col 285 Sector MY-O b7-2.
Col 285 Sector GN-H b11-0.
Pic Tok.
That will give you the coordinates for Dav's Hope:
Hyades Sector DR-V c2-23 ; Planet A 5; 44.8180 -31.3893
If you need help flying the latitude and longitude: I'll have do a separate write up, sorry - remind me.
At Dav's Hope you will find cool story - but also a lot of manufactured materials lying on the ground. Here you are looking for Chemical Manipulators. They are very rare, so once you've done a lap of the abandoned mine, log out, switch modes, and do another lap until you get a few Chemical Manipulators.
Then supercruise over to Planet A3 in the same system. Land near a crater rim, but not IN the crater. In the SRV, drive around ridge tops watching the wave scanner. You are looking for Arsenic which is very rare and this planet has a 2.2% presence (which is pretty good for Arsenic, but still can take some time). Arsenic spawns in Metallic Metorites and Mesosiderite. Go to http://www.wavescanner.net/ to hear what these sound like in the wave scanner. You are looking for these wavescanner signatures:
Metallic Metorites:
These have a classic double line, low in the scanner, with upwards streaks :
Mesosiderite:
You'll need as much Arsenic as you have Chemical Manipulators to get the Grade 5 FSD upgrade.
Pick up plenty of Phosphorous and other materials whenever you see other signatures in the wave scanner, but remember your priority is Arsenic.
Data Scans:
If you don't have any Datamined Wake Exceptions in your Data inventory by now - Open the Gal Map and search for a system in state: Famine with a high population. Sit about 6 Kms out from the front of the station (coriolis or bigger) and Wake scan until you find them. If you check GalNet each day you log in, there are weekly Health Reports which list systems in Outbreak and Famine. Maybe while you are doing missions for the Alioth permit, you can take a day to get your Wake Scans done.
Unlocking Felicty Farseer:
Getting invited:
You need Exploration Rank Scout or higher.
All the Barnacle sites are at least 450 LY from Deciat, so you should be able to hit Scout, just by picking up some MAs and then back to Deciat, and selling your explo data one-system-at-a-time.
Unlocking:
You need to sell her one Meta Alloy.
Fly to a ripe Barnacle site, shoot the stalks and collect a couple of Meta Alloys. Barnacles ripen and go barren on one of three cycles.
You can use CMDR PanPiper's spreadsheet to find ripe ones: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bichQJBbL9ygW1xXc3GQhC5KT-o9u05ihWKXebt4BcM/edit#gid=223643326 or have a look at his thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/312632-Meta-Alloy-Ripe-Barnacle-sources
Ranking up to the G5 FSD Range Mod:
Get her to do work. If you have lots of some material for a lower grade Mod you can get multiple tries at G1 to rank up to G3, but the value is lower. So say it takes 4 G2 mods to unlock the G3 mods, it will take 8 G1 mods to do the same.
Go for it.
https://inara.cz/galaxy-blueprint/2/
Mod your other modules along the way, just watch that you don't spend any of the things you need for the G5 FSD Range Mod:
G3 Dirty Drive Thrusters.
G3 Lightweight Sensors.
G3 Long Range Detailed Surface Scanner.
Get the G5 Long Range FSD Mod on your 5A FSD drive, which you can then use in your Asp if you are still in the DBX. (Store - don't sell your modified equipment)
Now MONEY:
There is an Alliance BGS edge case that is producing about 50MCr an hour when you are fully set up and optimised to milk it.
While it feels a bit expoilty to be making so much money - it IS a legit BGS edge case and it does help an important Alliance faction that may have plot points later in the game.
Fly out to the California Nebula.
The list of systems of interest is here: https://inara.cz/cmdr-logbook/3414/17018/
Visit them all and enjoy the unique content. The "Pumpkin Patch" for example is unknown outside this one Alliance location.
Once you have done all the tourist stuff out there it's time to get optimised to make money.
You will be doing two-jump ferry runs of passengers between Darwin Research Laboratory and Mic Turner Base. An Asp is a good starter ship.
Sell exploration data at any of the stations owned by Turner Research Group (they all are - we fixed that - you're welcome) until you have some good reputation with Turner.
At Mic Turner Base, store any optional internal modules you don't really need - shields, fuel scoops, SRVs, scanners. Buy the best and biggest passenger cabins that you can. Keep one small Cargo hold - you need at least 4 tons of cargo space to be able to claim mission rewards that include cargo.
Darwin Research Laboratory
Fly to Darwin Research Laboratory and pick up Turner Research Group passengers that want sightseeing tours to these tourist beacons: Alliance Outpost in the California Nebula and Mic Turner Bark Mounds. Often these missions will come with an extra stop at "Little Blue", but those missoins will complete when you scan the two previous beacons - you don't have to actually go to Little Blue.
There are other optimisation tricks like:
- Set up bookmarks to go straight to the Station or Surface Port in the System Map, and then naming them with a ".Darwin" and ".Mic Turner" so that they appear at the top or your list in GalMap.
- Not getting masslocked when you scan the Bark Mounds beacon.
- Flying no shields and having lots of heatsinks and avoiding scans.
- Scanning the orbital "Alliance" tourist beacon first, and then supercruising in the best path to first get high in the gravity well, and then back down neatly to the Bark Mounds beacon on a 45 degree slope. The orbital "Alliance" beacon and the "Bark Mounds" are on opposite side of the planet.
Mode Switch (cycle between open and solo) to refresh the Passenger Lounge, fill up on Turner Passengers before picking up a couple from the other factions. If you take too many from the other factions, you will upset the BGS. You need the Alliance faction Turner Research Group to stay on top.
Once you've got a couple hundred million credits, you can come back to the bubble and buy a Beluga from Lembava at the 15% discount, fill it with big high end cabins, and come back out.
This will solve your financial problems, and get you into some big ships.
The downside is that making this much money may spoil your enjoyment of other activities. Keep that in mind that you are getting the wealth and big ships to support the Alliance Diplomatic Corp to change governments to Alliance in the BGS, not for your personal gain.