SOS Mission - Usual to lose money when starting?

[Xenephon]

I just had an SOS mission (my 3rd) where I lost money.

Reward - 5.5k
Cost - 70 Medicine
Fuel - 135 round trip

It also took about 7 hours all up.

Just curious if this is what I can expect often?  As a starting player every Solar counts

Xenephon

[SirEmi]

Ah, well you need to improve on that a bit

What you did is like going from the US east coast to west coast with a truck and transporting just 25 kg of goods...

Fuel does not take into account the mass you carry, just distance and WHG modules installed / processing power.
So you need to upgrade the cargo bay and transport a lot more at once, and jump from one SoS to the other or multiple SoS before you have to get back to Earth.

You could even mix it with a combat mission that does "Pirate's nest" to loot pirate stations, then sell the stuff to SoS signals with your merchant / cargo ship. Ofc for that you'll need a combat ship in addition to the hauler.

[Dadds]

Things are tough out there when you first start out. Fuel at a premium, cargo space non existent and most of it needed to carry fuel. To add to that, the early missions not a whole lot to celebrate over with payout over time spent. Not a lot of easy solutions to that issue at first but it must be possible to overcome the cost/time factor to earn a buck, cause i did it. Self sufficiency worked well for me. Get the heck out of Sol space, a fair way out (hint, radon was my first fuel of choice and with an early investment in VIP i got good conversion rates to fuel) and collect those cargo space rescue missions to run back to Earth when you need to resupply your outpost. Stick at least 1 ATH and 1 MIF on your ship to grab cheap some materials on the way out to further reduce the cost of travel expenses. So i guess at first, buy yourself a biggish hull class, load her up and get spaced! (you could off course go the "easier" option and just raid other pilots mining outposts, not something i would recommend as a career choice. Life expectancy could be very short if you hit the wrong guys LOL)
Other solutions of course is to go door knocking at charitable corporations requesting an internship. A little "leg up" from the corporate might of your chosen clan can set you up nicely

[BB Goode]

What is the minimum ship requirement to do a Comm mission? Is 100 of each supply enough to do multiple SOS missions?

[kvala]

What is the minimum ship requirement to do a Comm mission? Is 100 of each supply enough to do multiple SOS missions?

For SOS: Sometimes they want fuel, sometimes they want meds... you never know what they demand. But, most annoying thing is that they want certain amount of one or another supply... you never know how much. For me, as a beginner, SOS missions sucks.
It seems that you have to have large capacity of cargo, to invest in large amounts of each supply and to do SOS in distant rings (distant quadrants). Cannot afford that at this time

[JamJulLison]

What is the minimum ship requirement to do a Comm mission? Is 100 of each supply enough to do multiple SOS missions?

You are going to need at least 25k space to bring in a good haul. You need room for fuel. Room for a backup fuel source. Then of course the medicines you carry. But you still need some open space for Escape Pods. You want to try to get out to the 4th ring.  That is where you can make the most profit. Medicines should sell quick though sometimes they can go slower. Here lately I have been getting too many fuel ones and not enough medicine ones. You want to go around until your either near empty on fuel or you are filled up on escape pods with hopefully all your medicines stolen. On the escape pods alone with about 25-30k space I make usually around 18 mill.  Sometimes more.  Of course add in the medicine sales and that profit number of course is actually higher.  You will need patience though. It can take time to get your ship filled up.  The best thing to do is travel along the 4th ring in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction going from SOS to SOS mission.