Not sure if this is the right place for this...

I am staying independent for the foreseeable future.  However I would like to be 'at peace' with any and all corporations and other players who wish to honor such a peace agreement.

Base prices (mk1, if you built it yourself, using materials bought from Earth.  Multiply by desired level, then add markup and 5% GCA fee)

Adv Atmospheric harvester    AAH   $56,208
Adv Cargo Bay    ACB   $8,462
Adv Electromagnetic shield    AES   $32,688
Adv Mining facility    AMF   $43,336
Atmospheric harvester    ATH   $7,809
Cargo Bay    CAB   $1,264
Combat Drive    CDR   $2,400
Crystalline armor plates    CAP   $816,548
Electromagnetic shield    SHG   $2,424
FTL Drive    FTL   $4,284
Hangar bay    HAB   $36,546
Iridium armor plates    IAP   $26,096
Laser Cannon    LCN   $73,326
Living Quarters    LVQ   $4,204
Marines Assault Unit    MAU   $5,507
Mining facility    MIF   $5,989
Nuke Defense System    NDS   $78,120
Osmium armor plates    OAP   $163,422
Railgun Battery    RGB   $330,680
Science Lab    SLB   $9,170
Spec. Atmospheric Harvester    SAH   $30,090
Specialized Mining Facility    SMF   $30,090
Strategic Nuke    STN   $300,210
Titanium armor plates    TAP   $3,622
Viper Squadron    VPR   $10,190
Wormhole Detector    WHD   $15,002
Wormhole Generator    WHG   $18,030

Thank you so much for this info!

Raphael, I think if you would subsidize the manager fee/salary that would be a big help.

I'm getting richer now...but a few months ago ever solar was sooo precious.  There needs to be a good profit - 5%-10% say - for the person who is giving up their manufacturing time to make modules.  That seems completely appropriate - would have been ever so much faster making money if I could have only bought some ACB 50's early in the game at a 10% markup.

A new player should realize fairly quickly they need some SLB's - so there should be some market for SLB's.  OR a new player could totally ignore science and buy 100% of their modules.  That would cost them 10%, say, more than making it themselves but they'd avoid the cost of buying SLB's and buying a Titan to put it on.  From a cashflow perspective for an early game newbie it would make so much sense to do that.  Only after you are over the 'getting to SOS hump' would you then need to buy some Titans and SLB's and start the research tree. 

I'm thinking of making some "SOS starter packages" - 1xWHG 35, 6xACB 50 = $4209400+10%=$4,630,340.  That amount is well within striking distance for a player doing a week of intrastellar transport to Venus, Moon, Mars, Diemos, and Phobos.

[keeping each of your ships in jump time calculation countdown is your #1 goal]

I learned all of the following by trial and error and a lot of good advice from people who took pity on my struggles.  I'm now making fairly good coin doing SOS Distress missions so I thought I'd share my strategy and what I've learned with the community. 

There are 4 types of SOS Distress missions:

• deliver fuel - you transfer fuel from your hold.  They pay a premium - about $45/m^3 but this varies widely.  The most I recorded was a sale of 1371 m^3 of fuel
• deliver medicine - you transfer medicine from your cargo, they pay a premium price
• rescue transport - these are the golden tickets.  ALWAYS accept these!  This is why you do SOS Distress missions!
• mining/prospecting/PT - see below

The profit from the sale of fuel and medicines pays for about 50% of the resupply cost for the fuel and medicine.  The 'payday' is when you transport the rescue missions back to Earth. 

I do not accept mining/prospecting/PT missions at the present time.  YOU have to pay $$ to accept a mining/prospecting/PT mission.  If you don't mine then accepting these missions just costs money.  Also, I was reminded that once you accept a mining/prospecting/PT mission unless you abandon the PT mission at Earth you will be charged a fee (on top of the cost to 'buy' the mission). Abandoning the PT mission at Earth is free, however, you DO NOT get your initial cost of 'buying' the PT mission back - that is sunk cost.  Now that there is the GCA to allow cross-player trading I think there might be a market for high profit SOS mining/PT missions.  I know there are several 'miners' who pay a premium for high-dollar SOS mining/PT missions so you could possibly get a return on your 'buy the PT mission cost' investment. 

In order to do SOS Distress missions you need a ship(s) capable of doing interstellar jumps and holding enough fuel to make searching for SOS Distress missions profitable.  You can start SOS Distress missions with WHG-1 and ACB-10's, however, your goal is to make more money/hour of playtime than doing the intrastellar transport missions you have been doing to this point.  I'm quite happy with following configuration on my fleet of 16 SOS ships:

• Frigate (8 slot) optimized Scout X
• 1xFaster Than Light (FTL) mark 1
• 1xWorm Hole Generator (WHG) mark 50
• 6xAdvanced Cargo Bay (ACB) mark 200

You can start doing SOS Distress missions profitably when you can configure a ship with:

• Frigate (8 slot) not optimized
• 1xFTL mark 1
• 1xWHG mark 1
• 6xACB mark 10

You don't need to optimize Scout X to start SOS Distress missions.  This is a costly but very worthwhile upgrade.  Start doing SOS, make some money, and do the upgrade when you can because the reduction in fuel cost and the speed up in jump time calculation is way worth the investment - it doubles your $/hour profit.  However, please note this is one place where you get penalized for stair-step optimization - only optimize to level X and do not optimize to any level between.

The higher the WHG the faster the jump calculation countdown is - and therefore the more $$/playtime hour.  The bigger the cargo the longer you can stay out SOS Distress mission hunting - and therefore the more $$/playtime hour.  I think getting to at least WHG mark 10 is your first goal then ACB mark 20 then WHG mark 35 then ACB upgrade to mark 50, then buy another ship.

WHG 50 is as a bit too high for a 16 ship SOS fleet - by the time I cycle through my list of SOS ships, jump them, do the SOS Distress mission, and select the next mission or jump 16LY in the appropriate direction then more than one ship is already ready to jump again.  To be honest, at 16 SOS ships WHG 50 is now probably overkill but I've been too lazy to 'downgrade' to mark 35.  The cost of doing that vs the fuel savings is not a high enough ROI compared to other uses of my money.  However, if I knew then what I knew now I would have stopped at WHG 35 which is a good balance between speed and cost and would be a perfect 'end state' for SOS Distress missions imho.

I didn't start SOS Distress missions until I could outfit with ACB 10's - before outfitting 6xACB 10 you just can't store enough fuel to make SOS Distress mission hunting more profitable per playtime hour than intrastellar transport.  I just kept pouring RP into ACB and kept a rolling mark upgrade going as follows:  As a new or upgraded ACB was delivered the next time a ship came back in to Sol to refuel I'd swap out that ships ACB module(s) for an upgraded ACB of a higher mark level.  I would then do a manufacturing mark upgrade for the lower level swapped-out ACB to whatever ACB level I had researched at that time.  After a while I'd have all my manufacturing bays active with building ACB's or SLB's and still have cash left over - then I'd buy a license and a new frigate and as cash and modules became available I'd outfit my next ship in the SOS fleet.

How do you get these WHG and ACB modules?  One of two ways:

• Manufacture Your Own Modules
  You'll need at least one Titan (100 slot) parked at Earth full of Science Lab (SLB) modules and enough ACB's to act as your manufacturing and science ship(s).  Note: SLB's give you Research Points (RP) which are needed to research the ability to build higher and higher module mark levels.  While I was learning I spent RP foolishly on this, that, and the other thing.  What I should have done is:
  
  1. research ACB to 10
  2. research WHG to 35
  3. research SLB to 100 and ACB to 200 alternating 1:2 - and then do a rolling upgrade for both ACB's and SLB's
  4. not spend ONE RP on anything else until that was accomplished
  
  
• Buy Modules from Another Player
  There is now an alternative to building any modules.  Go to the Astro Galaxy forum here and put in a build request.  Soon someone will offer to build the modules you need - or Publius has a standing offer to build modules at a 15%-over-cost premium. Buying from the GCA will always be at a premium over 'build your own', however, doing so saves you money you'd spend building up your RP=Research Point capability.  Had this been available I now see I would have been better off from a cash flow perspective buying modules and earning SOS-level $$ instead of building SLB's to research my own build capabilities.  Either way is good - buying modules would be faster cash flow at a premium vs build your own at a slower cash flow but less total $$ outlay.  A good balance would be to do intrastellar transport missions until you get about $5 million saved up, buy 1xWHG35 and 6xACB 50, outfitting your first SOS Distress mission capable frigate ship, start doing SOS Distress missions and pull in SOS Distress mission level $$, and then build your own modules after that.

While certainly not mandatory, for SOS Distress missions you really want VIP (16LY/jump instead of 12LY/jump, -33% on jump calculation time, convert diamonds to fuel at 100% efficiency vs 60% efficiency).  It is also really useful to get the Navigation Officer (-35% on jump calculation time) and the Engine Specialist officer (-40% fuel use).  It only cost a few $USD to buy enough QP for 15 days of each - if your reading this you like the game enough to pop a few bucks.  Alternately you can convert AP to QP and buy VIP/Nav Officer/Engine Specialist for QP.  Buy VIP before Nav Officer.  Engine Specialist is more of a 'nice to have' where VIP and Nav Officer really juice up the $$/playtime hour.

Whenever a SOS ship goes back to Earth for resupply I do the following:

• ACB upgrade if applicable
• resupply 200 diamonds as 'emergency fuel' if necessary (read that I goofed up and converted some diamonds to fuel and want to get back to the 200 diamond emergency fuel level)
• leave 200 m^3 free space - useful if the first SOS Distress mission is a transport mission
• Of the remaining cargo space I resupply back to 85% fuel and 15% medicine.  When it is time to resupply the ship I always have maybe 1000 m^3 medicine and a little fuel left - I take that into account and so after refueling I maintain the 85% fuel and 15% medicine ratio.  I always have medicine left - you may choose to do 90% fuel, 10% medicine - but I hate getting to a medicine SOS and not being able to sell to them so I over-stock medicine a bit.

Once I've dropped off the passengers, refueled, bought medicine (and diamonds if need be), and installed the ACB upgrade when possible I do a blind jump from Earth.  If I land within 2 sectors of another one of my ships I head 'away' from the direction that ship(s) is heading.  After that initial go I don't really pay too much attention to where my other ships are - I should, and to maximize profit if you are waiting for all your ships to finish jump calculations then it is a good time to do fleet position management.  Or if you're like me that is when you make a chess move on www.chess.com which for me is a way to keep the 'waiting for jump' boredom down. 

When your ship has a jump ready and the SOS Distress mission you have routed to is gone it can be for 3 reasons:

• another player got to the SOS Distress mission before you did - maybe me!
• SOS Distress missions 'time out' after a while, however, they also respawn someplace in the sector
• it was actually you who accepted the SOS Distress mission

You can't stop the first 2 reasons from happening but you can control for the third by keeping your ships far apart.

If I see my jump is ready but to 'nowhere' then I do a quick starmap view to see if it was me who I'm competing against!  If so I route away from my other ship.  If I'm not competing against myself then I route to the closest SOS Distress mission, or if none are available I route a 16LY jump in a direction away from my other ships - but I'm usually lazy and just go in the same direction I was traveling. 

If all your ships are on jump time calculation countdown you can use that time to make sure you are not sending two ships to the same SOS Distress mission.  Sometimes I'll end up jumping two of my ships to the same place (the first one rejected a mining mission, which is still there, and the second ship jumps on top of the first).  When I notice that has happened I just point the second ship in the opposite direction from where the first ship is heading.  However, those ships may 'synch' to the same SOS group again.  I've kicked myself more than once realizing one ship has been burning fuel 'following' another ship for a while.  I'm getting better at looking where the other ships are but...meh...I'm lazy a lot of the time now.  However, your profit per hour will be much higher if you keep your ships well apart from each other.

I keep track of the number of jumps away from Sol a ship is.  I try to keep 1000 m^3 fuel beyond what the 'return to Sol' fuel cost would be - as soon as my fuel level gets to 'return-to-Sol' + 1000 fuel I stop taking SOS Distress missions and head back to Sol for refueling/buying medicine/buying diamonds if needed/upgrading ACB if possible.  I make mistakes and sometimes forget to go back to Sol before I find myself short of fuel.  That is why I carry diamonds - 200 diamonds will convert to enough fuel to bring you back from anywhere within ring 5.  I've needed this <facepalm/>

I try to keep a paper 'log' for each ship jotting down the jump time minutes and the 'fuel-to-Sol' estimate - with an WHG-50 I multiply number of jumps to Sol x 300 for a good estimate of how much fuel it will take.  Your 'fuel-per-jump' numbers will vary from mine...but if all your WHG's are the same mod level it is easy to do this quick mental calculation, look at the current fuel, and see if you are in good shape.  I'm not perfect at this, however, when I am I never run out of fuel and always start back to Sol when it is appropriate to do so.  When I don't...well...that's why I have diamonds or that's why I find my ship is near Sol with no SOS Distress mission in sight and about a half of my cargo still full of fuel.  I'm hoping this public admission will goad me into being a bit more diligent on keeping track of fuel - to be honest I don't really log it diligently any more. 

However, I am diligent in logging the 'jump time in minutes' and crossing out the previous entry for that ship immediately after I set the next jump for that ship.  This is important...you'll find by looking at the jump time list and where each ship is on the list you will know which ship(s) is ready to jump and which ships are still in jump calculation countdown.  Also, on the log, if the last jump was a mining/PT mission (which I do not accept) then I put an asterisk next to the time.  That way I don't forget and jump back to the SOS Distress mission I just rejected.

Always remember, keeping each of your ships in jump time calculation countdown is your #1 goal to maximize $$/playtime hour.  When my fleet was small and every $$ mattered soooo much I could spend a lot of time on fleet position management and fuel management and still keep every ship on jump calculation countdown.  As your SOS fleet grows it gets harder to keep them all on countdown - and more of a pain to do fleet position management.  Here are some tips on how to achieve your #1 goal:

• Big tip: Set the jump to the next SOS Distress mission (or 16LY jump if no SOS Distress missions are available) immediately after pressing the 'JUMP' button.
• when your fleet is all on jump time calculation make a list of the next few ships with the shortest remaining jump time calculation
• always set the jump to what you think it should be.  Get the timer ticking.  Only then check if your original hunch was right - it usually is and you saved time by 'optimistically' setting the jump
• if you can predict you'll have a long cooldown window coming you can wait a bit on unloading passengers (PAYDAY!!) and refueling/medicine/diamond buying. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few
• after you refuel, set the blind jump and then wait for that countdown - it is only 10 seconds.  Then set see where you are on the starmap relative to other ships in your fleet and set the first jump for that ship

After jumping if there are no SOS Distress missions within reach I just pick a direction 'away' from my last jump - that is if my last jump was from N to S I'll do a 16LY jump due South, if my last jump was SSE to NNW I'll do a 16LY NNW jump, etc. I often forget exactly which direction the ship jumped from but I do go 'generally' the same direction as before.  Doesn't really matter-you could do a random jump in any direction and be fine just as long as you don't go back the way you came - presumably there are no SOS Distress missions there because you've cleaned them out.  If your fleet is small, and you don't have any ship that has a jump ready, then after setting the jump in the same direction check to see if this will put you around another of your ships...and if so adjust the 16LY jump accordingly.  But set the 'same direction' jump first - this will usually be good and getting the jump calculation countdown going is your #1 goal.

While SOS Distress missions make more money in ring 4, there seem to be a LOT less SOS Distress missions out there (probably due to competition from other players).  Conversely, there are a lot more SOS Distress missions in rings 1, 2, and 3 but the payout is a lot less.  I play it both ways...and for me both seem to give me about the same $/hr of playtime.  There are no missions in ring 5 and beyond - no planets, COM missions, or SOS Distress missions.  When I see I'm in a totally 'blank' sector I make sure I'm not in ring 5.  When I find I've accidentally jumped into ring 5 I make a 16LY jump back toward SOL.

Hope this helps!

and, yes, I do like trains

I think this game is end state.  Sir Emi gets a few bucks now and then and it runs on a server that is up anyway.  But there are so few people playing, and so few of them buying stuff with RL money, that I can't imagine him spending development time on the game.

I'll buy two of the shields please?  I wish I could afford all 10.   

I'm only playing sporadically until May 6, however, I can log on to complete this transfer.  I am having a bit of trouble 'rejoining' the GCA but I hope that will resolve itself shortly.

Perhaps it is something I'm doing wrong, however, I think there may be an issue w/ the GCA corp.

I joined the GCA corp to send some diamonds to Consul Publius so he could optimize the GCA ships for cargo and to give a bunch of ACB's to Cliff to install on the ships.  I then left the GCA corp and re-joined the SOL corp.  I just left SOL and tried to 'rejoin' the GCA corp for another deal.  When I try to rejoin I get the following error message:

 You already have a pending request to join this corp...
 Please wait until it is approved or declined.

Cliff - are you seeing my 'join corp' request?

I'm not a 'major independent' so perhaps I shouldn't comment.  But all my dealings w/ any PT member have been very good.

Cliff - I will make a request to join the GCA now.  To fulfill my charter-member pledge I will buy sTitan (or did Publius do this already?) and put some ACB-200's on it.