1 Immediately add the extra cargo bay and a fuel scoop (essential for picking up cargo containers when you win by flying just over them, also for scooping free fuel from the sun's aurora if you are moving rapidly across the galaxy by flying into the suns aurora). Forget passenger carriers (complete waste of time, not profitable) Go for the docking computer ASAP. Don't listen to those who advise against. Yes, I too can now fly in with ease, but in the early days it is incredibly frustrating and you want to play, not toddle about lining it up on every trip. Use the Shift D key to not get driven mad by the music!
2 Get yourself ASAP to two close planets one agricultural, one industrial. start trading computers one way, liquor or furs the other. check the gold, platinum, gems prices in both and trade these too (no cargo space needed)
3 As soon as you can, get a front beam laser, then a military laser, witchdrive injector, scanning target enhancement and harden up your shields.
All of these are essential to get fighting (and winning!) just keep enough funds to trade well at first. Witchdrives are essential to save hours of sitting around whilst other ships disappear.
4 Now you are in business. Progress will be slow at first, start adding OXPs all available on the website, your Ads is great, giving you con stations. As you get to competant, you start to get missions, enjoy them and accept ANY legit contract (don't carry illegal narcotics etc if you don't want Offender status). They get more profitable as you take them on.
5 Now - as your ship gets older it starts to loose value, but you are not rich enough at this point to build up to those fabulous ships. Forget the standard Python, which is only thing you can afford. It plods! instead, when you are up to about 100,000 credits, look at the ships in the OXPs. My advice is trade in for a Griffin II, essentially a beefed up Cobra III with 45 ton cargo. By this stage your score is approaching 'Dangerous' (hopefully) and trades really start to sing, earning 10-15,000 credits a session at last. Profits rapidly start to escalate. pirate if you want, where trading is not profitable, but making sure the cops are not about if you do - my approach was to load up high value computers and to leave spare cargo space on less profitable foodstuff / drink returns, using the latter runs to grab anything I could with the cargo scoop. good tip too 9obvious to the experienced) is to use the zoom (Z key) when picking up cargo, it makes cargo much easier to locate.
I would welcome others findings at this level and - perhaps - tips for the next stage from Stage 2 players!
Have fun, Lysander
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