Gaining Credits

## Foreword

The universe of Interstellar Pilot does not have a dedicated police force, nor a ceiling, and requires little else besides a ship and determination, not to mention money (Credits in the game). There are plenty of ways to gain money, from honest and hard work to lawless raiding of traders. Any player in Interstellar Pilot can quickly learn how to shape the game's economic system in their favour, or pick the best targets carrying priceless goods or bounties on their heads. The player can choose to be a trader, an enforcer, a simple miner, a taxi service, courier, bounty hunter, and so forth. This page contains information about the various methods in which a player can gain credits.

## Economic Status

Explanation of the "Wealth" statistic in Factions screen

 Destitute
 Deprived
 Adequate
 Comfortable
 Well Off
 Affluent
 Rolling In It

## Gaining Credits

There are several ways to gain credits in game. Some are easier than others and some require certain ships or buildings.
It is vital to remember what sectors have been discovered and how they affect the game.

Examples: When trading, the player database must have the locations of the relevant stations to trade. If the player's faction has no intel on what is in a sector, the player's ships will be unable to trade on autopilot. This can be rectified by personal exploration or by purchasing intel from NPC ships/stations.

If necessary, the player may use **Fleet Settings** to limit ship movement. Select a station or ship with docking bays to serve as a base, then select **Restrict Jump Distance** to limit how many sectors away it can stray from its home base. This is especially useful for Ranger-M's, as traveling long distances can be hazardous for them.

Intel also includes the locations of asteroids in the sectors which they appear. These are denoted by having a small asteroid next to the sector name. In order to mine asteroids on autopilot, the faction must have acquired intel on the locations of asteroids, whether by personal exploration or by purchasing it.

## Trading

**Profit Rate: Medium**

**Difficulty: Easy-Average**

This is the main way most people get money. Trading is easy to pick up and only requires a small bit of money to purchase items. The first objective is to locate a station that sells the goods the pilot wishes to trade. After buying the items, the pilot locates a buyer and sells the cargo. This can be to a station or to another trader, though buying or selling to another pilot greatly decreases the net profit. Bandits typically target any pilots on their faction's enemy list, so it is advisable to equip a cloak to avoid being attacked. Late-game, it is highly advised to build stations, which can earn immense amounts of money with proper placement and supply. See the Stations page for further detail.

**Tips**

* If the player owns their own station(s), it is possible to manually transfer cargo to owned ships to send them off to the selling point. This does not cost money. When an owned ship "purchases" goods from a player, it is simply transferring cargo.
* To locate the best prices, look under **Log** and scroll down to **Cargo Prices** to see which stations in the player database have the best prices.
* It is possible to setup "Patrols" by leaving a few free cargo space in the hold, restricting the jump distance to 0 in fleet settings and setting the aggression to max.
* It is advised to put cloaks on all trading ships. While cloaked, they cannot be attacked and the player does not have to worry about upgrading their weapons/shields or repairing them, unless they get damaged in a crossfire. Make sure they are set to **Prefer to cloak**, and that **Attack Hostiles** and **Intercept Hostiles** are off.
* It is possible to "AFK farm" credits by setting autopilot on a few cloaked trading ships and leaving your device on. If your phone automatically turns off after a few minutes, you can look in your device settings or installing an app to prevent that. Please ensure you place your phone in a safe area, as some devices are known to overheat and could cause a fire.
* Usually, courier missions give more rewards than trading the same amount of goods, and do not require money to buy the cargo. However, missions cannot be automated, and there might not be high-value courier missions available.
* As counter-intuitive as it may seem, a large cargo hold does *not* mean a better trade ship. A Magnus can short a station of goods, or flood it with too much of one type. This can cause issues. Also, it will generally only go for stations with large amounts of cargo. This can leave it waiting for extremely long periods of time waiting for more cargo to become available.
* If the pilot wants ships to ignore/not go through a sector, use **Faction Settings** to instruct owned ships to avoid travelling into that sector.

## Mining

**Profit Rate: Decent**

**Difficulty: Easy**

Mining, while slow and boring, is by far the safest occupation that provides a constant, stable income.

Tips

* Mining with a large group of ships on autopilot is more effective than solo mining.
* Upgrade to the Advanced Mining Laser on the Front Mining Turret (Hauler-M) or Mining Turret (Ranger-M) for more efficiency. It doubles the success chance.
* In the current version of the game (1.62) there exists a bug where all Hauler-M's are unable to use their second mining laser, therefore, it is advised to only upgrade the first laser and sell the second one for autopilot mining ships.

## Scavenging

**Profit Rate: Low**

**Difficulty: Average**

Scavenging is an easy way to make a quick buck. All you need is a tractor beam, and a place of conflict. When a battle happens and the fog clears, be the first to snatch all the cargo, missiles, and mines. You can then sell this stuff at stations around the universe.

**Tips**

* Dymapa 753 is a good place to start scavenging as the Black Sail is not initially hostile and other nations like the TEF or the DSMC fight them.
* Keep countermeasures for yourself, they are always useful to have.
* Be sure to not accidentally attack another ship, or destroy your cargo.
* If you take other factions' goods, they will become hostile towards you. However, other factions' ships may steal your goods.

## Bounty Hunting/Missions

**Profit Rate: High**

**Difficulty: Hard**

Doing missions or hunting for a bounty is always dangerous work. Most of the time, bounties are placed on ships who have seen several fights, often against larger vessels.

**Tips**

* Don't attack anything you know you can't handle!
* You or one of your owned ships/stations has to kill the target for your account to be credited with the bounty, but other factions can weaken them so you can make the finishing shot.
* If you are friendly with factions (green on the display) their enemies will often be unfriendly (red/deep orange). This is a good way to find ships that may have bounties, and won't affect your standing with friendly factions negatively.
* Stay in the good graces of the Factions and take out the freelancers, as they have no association to any of the Factions and they're mostly easy pickings!

## Transporting Passengers

**Profit Rate: Average**

**Difficulty: Easy**

Transporting passengers is an easy and typically profit-only occupation.

**Tips**

* 'P' variant vessels have the smallest passenger cabins installed stock.
* Upgrade your engines as soon as you can in order to shorten your trip and maximise your profits (time is money!).
* If you have issues with hostile factions attacking your transports, purchase a cloak and enable it to avoid being detected by enemies.

## Raiding

Profit Rate: High

Difficulty: Hard

You can always go for the evil way and destroy traders for their loot. Just be sure that you won't get destroyed instead. Generally, the best places to raid are the gates of a sector with trade stations, but you can camp specific stations such as Arms factory or Vehicle plants. Bounties are placed on you with every kill and theft, unless you are attacking solo traders.

**Tips**

* You can kill freelancers (factions with personal names) with little to no penalty at all. As their "factions" would be destroyed, no bounty would be placed on you.
* Be sure to scan your target's cargo! It would be disappointing after a long head to head battle with an Ares trader, just to have it drop a couple lancers.
* Try not to finish your enemy with missiles, as they can hit the cargo instead when you kill the enemy and blow the precious cargo up.
* If given appropriate funds you can pay off any bounty placed on you to prevent it from stacking up.
* Make sure you have good relations with someone to sell to, or the entire endeavour is pointless!
* If your raiding targets are honourable, gentle and normal factions, it is suggested to start the game in the **Plunderer** mode to have pirates and rebels to sell to, as the moral factions will not allow you to dock without using the game menu, and this will keep you from selling your loot.

## Repairing

* Profit rate: Low
* Difficulty: Average

Repairing is a simple way to make money but can be rather expensive to set up. You need to first purchase a repair station which in early game is far too expensive to purchase. Then place it in any sector, though it is advised to scout out a conflict prone sector first. The way this station makes money is that whenever any ship repairs at your station they pay the repair price plus an extra tax which sent to you. This method is not the best way of making money as you cannot guarantee that a ship will even dock at the station.

**Tips**

* A great sector for your repair shop is Dymapa 753, as the TEF or Al-Ghat often fight with Black Sail, meaning they will need repairs often. In custom universes, find a sector with a sizeable patroller presence and use combat missions to bait enemy ships into the heart of the sector. The patrollers will take out the ships for you, then dock at your station and repair there. This can provide a decent income stream combined with the destroy missions, as you don't have to kill the enemy ships yourself for a destroy mission to be successful.
* This method provides a good passive income but is not at all preferred mid game simply because by the time you are able to purchase a repair station you should already have a better source of income.