Postby Thanewright » Fri Jun 12, 2015 12:04 pm
How to rush rank 4 by spending money to make money:
If you're say Rank 2 and want Rank 4 by the end of the week, and are willing to put in a *little* time and effort (like say, a rainy Saturday, looks at tomorrow's forecast...) Here's my plan with my 92 ton cargo Asp.
"Things" are the trade agreements, legal documents, whatever they are.
1) Show up to control system, (system A) get free 15 tons of Things.
2) Pay 600Kcr for another 60 tons of Things.
3) Ship them to target system (system B), get 75 merits.
4) That only took 10 minutes, so check bulletin board, buy commodities, ship them to another system (system C).
5) Arrive here, check bulletin board, sell high, buy cheap, go back to system A.
6) Repeat.
Ideally pick systems A, B, and C so that each leg can make a decent profit. And even better if each one tends to ask, in the bulletin board, for stuff the previous system (or even the next system) sells. Which is why I'm doing 75 tons and not 90: in order to fulfil those quests. Some runs there will be no applicable quests so on those you can ramp up to 90. Doing the bulletin board missions and possibly changing up System C to suit the missions make these runs feel a lot less like a chore/grind.
I found with 45 tons of Things a cycle I was breaking even, at 75 tons of Things I was loosing about 300KCr a cycle, but that's the price I'm willing to pay to rush rank 4. I'm at about 500 merits now, so this will take another 13-14 runs, and I've enough in the bank to see that through.
Unfortunately I won't be able to relax next week: Assuming they start halving your merits for real, I'll be down to 750, and will have to do 10 runs like above next week, and 5 the week after. After that, it'll be just 3 runs as stated above until I can upgrade to a bigger ship (or 8 runs without paying anything).
Edit: Forgot total cost. Starting from 100 merits, you need to make 1400. at 75 merits a run that's 19 runs. 60 merits a run must be bought, or 600KCr * 19 = 11.4 MCr. You'll get back 5MCr at the end of the week so you've paid 6.4 MCr.
Week after it will take 750 merits to maintain rank 4, or 10 runs, costing 6MCr, a loss of 1MCr.
Week after it will take 375 merits to maintain rank 4, or 5 runs, costing 3MCr, or a profit of 2MCr.
If you have a bigger ship and deeper pockets, all this will be quicker but cost more.
With a Cobra I'd probably spread it over 2 weeks.
Week 1: To rank 3. Buy 15 tons each run. Each run generates 30 merits and costs 150KCr. You'll need 22 runs to hit rank 3.
Week 2: To rank 4. Buy 20 tons each run. Each run generates 40 merits and costs 200KCr. You'll need 29 runs to hit rank 4.
That assumes you keep your scanner and shields: A stripped down Cobra can carry 60 tons of cargo, with will bring time down to 11 runs for rank 3, 19 runs for rank 4.