Elite: Dangerous PvE - Mobius

If you're making that level of profit per ton, you may want to re-consider a fuel scoop. The profit you can make from even just one more 4 ton rack could easily exceed the fuel costs you might save with a scoop on a 22ly jump. At least that's my experience in a T6 and an Asp. Maybe it tilts the other way on other ships.

TeleDan wrote:If you're making that level of profit per ton, you may want to re-consider a fuel scoop. The profit you can make from even just one more 4 ton rack could easily exceed the fuel costs you might save with a scoop on a 22ly jump. At least that's my experience in a T6 and an Asp. Maybe it tilts the other way on other ships.

I agree. A class 1 or class 2 scoop is so slow that it costs more to sit there scooping than buying fuel. And if you use a higher class scoop, you sacrifice too much cargo space. I even tried exchanging a cargo hold for a scoop every tenth run, and it still wasn't worth the time lost in outfitting and lost cargo capacity. You really need to break it down to profit per minute.

I'm looking into trading rares.

Since I'm already in a T6 I'll start with this

Any other thoughts/suggestions?

Excellent post Commiekaze.
I was looking for something like this, starting to get bored of bounty hunting, and wouldn't mind churning out a few more creds. Currently at about 30mill.

I'll be honest, I'm disregarding some of the advice in this thread since I switched from smuggling to trading, and have no regrets. Still, some people may totally disagree with me, probably most, actually.

Running a Python with 200t of cargo, but I also have a decent set of weapons (2 medium burst turrets, one large pulse turret, and 2 large gimballed pulse lasers), a strong shield, and 4 shield boosters in my utility slots. I also have a class 4 fuel scoop and an advanced discovery scanner loaded.

I'll give you you guys a minute to clean up the grey matter that exploded out of your ears, or the endless stream of tears from laughter at that last part.

I get about 17ly jump range with an empty hold and full fuel, ~14 laden. I consider that to be ok, but I got about 20 in my Asp, even with all it's hull reinforcement modules and 96 cargo. So of course I could do better.

But honestly, having the big fuel scoop is nice because it means my multi-jump range is essentially infinite without making detours to refuel (unless I go through a bunch of systems that only have red dwarf stars, or any other kind you can't scoop from, but they are the minority), and while my fuel expenses weren't that high, it kind of tweaks the frugal part of my brain the right way to not be paying for gas, especially when it's out there to be had for free. I know, I could probably get 16t of cargo in there, but this setup kind of makes me happy.

And then the scanner... the thing is expensive. It takes up a slot that could be used for cargo (though not much). However, I tend to use it while scooping fuel, and I've hit a bunch of systems between populated areas with 33 astronomical objects or so. I don't do any detailed scanning to speak of (which would make a lot more money, but also take a lot more time), but I pulled in around 200 grand yesterday just turning in map data.

It breaks the monotony of flying between stations a bit, and will pay for itself in maybe another week or two. If I'd only be adding 16 or less tons (I think it might be in a class 2 slot? Don't remember), I may actually be pulling in more money this way since I'm not finding runs that yield more than 1 grand a ton.

I also have the shields and guns because I do get interdicted on occasion, but I like to submit, and then beat the everloving crap out of them for the audacity of pulling me out of frameshift. I actually managed to splash an Imperial Clipper without losing my shields yesterday, and made 98 grand for those 5 minutes. Not only did it again, break the monotony, but it was fairly profitable. I can do very well 1 on 1, or even 3 on 1 if we're talking Asp and smaller against the NPCs in this build, plus I'm hauling 200 cargo. And getting map data. And not spending on fuel. And in those circumstances described, not spending on repairs. (I was doing ok-ish in conflict zones with this, but while I would make decent cash, I would also lose half of it to repairs, as I could only take getting swarmed for so long.)

So is my build optimized? For anything? Not really. But I'm having a blast with it, and not really sacrificing that much profit on my road to an Anaconda. I'm not saying going fully trade-optimized is wrong, but I do want to point out there may be another way to do this, if you feel like it.

Schmobius wrote:...

The important thing is to do what you enjoy, if you enjoy your set-up and the way you are playing then you are doing the right thing.

Xebeth wrote:

Schmobius wrote:...

The important thing is to do what you enjoy, if you enjoy your set-up and the way you are playing then you are doing the right thing.

Enjoying, and doing pretty good on the money. I think I cleared about 10 million yesterday.

I just wanted to make a point of how I was operating in case it saves someone else from burning out on the game while grinding for credits.

Schmobius wrote:I'll be honest, I'm disregarding some of the advice in this thread since I switched from smuggling to trading, and have no regrets. Still, some people may totally disagree with me, probably most, actually.

Running a Python with 200t of cargo, but I also have a decent set of weapons (2 medium burst turrets, one large pulse turret, and 2 large gimballed pulse lasers), a strong shield, and 4 shield boosters in my utility slots. I also have a class 4 fuel scoop and an advanced discovery scanner loaded.

No grey matter exploding here, in fact that's pretty much the same thing I did with my first python setup (ok there was that one e-rated one we won't talk about)
I too had 200t, and plenty of defense and offense (went basic 2 medium multi's and 3 large pulses all gimballed), anything that would interdict was simply free money and it could handle anaconda's and anything else with ease, in fact I would simply swap out some cargo racks for cell banks and go hunting.

Here's the way I feel about scanners and fuel scoops.
They might seem expensive, but they are really not, in fact they make you money from first scan\scoop since what we pay for them is mainly like putting your money in an escrow or something, the minute you are done with them you sell them and get 100% of your money back.
Only drawback to expensive mods is in case you lose your ship, that never happened in my python (except that thing we aren't talking about)

The trick for playing any game for longer periods of time is at least to me, switching it up I do what I feel like, I trade, I smuggle, I hunt and I have even go exploring.

But exploring isn't very profitable heck I made the last time I went out about as much pr day spent in the black as I do 10 minutes running cargo..