Guide to funding, income, and credits

This is an open guide, please feel free to revise and update this guide as necessary.

Intro

SO if you re here i am going to assume you have noticed that getting enough money in star sonata is not as easy as it is in other games. Due to low player population, certain ideas about F2P player held by the dev team, and recent changes to the game, trying to get the funding to run your character on Earth Force layers is a jaw dropping headache. That said,{http://forum.starsonata.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=63277 after an extensive and bitter argument] i have at least managed to assemble nearly every income source in game, and will publish them here for your edification. Yes, every possible effort was made to expand this list, read the link for details.

THis list is divided into catagories and color coded for your convieneance. These are

Jaw droppingly easy, anyone over level 100 can do this and make decent money

Simple to do, but requires some effort, either no limitations and decent rewards or some limitations and great rewards

Are limited by level, Class or some other important factor. This is the lowest level i would advise you to rely on.

Are either very limited, inconsistent in income, or difficult for some other reason.

Totally inconsistent or extremely difficult to make work. Included only for notation.

IMPORTANT; P2P funding options are not listed in this guide because frankly they are so easy to find. Between Strontium 90 and Subspace, there is no reason a P2P player should have any difficulty with early game funding.

Colored Empires

One of the earliest dungeons you will find is also one of your best sources of income. Located off of Prism, you MUST remember to set any bots to have to not "Fight Enemies" as the Paxian ship in Prism will attack you, denying you access to the station and thus the mission start point. The station is located between the warp points to the north, you need Warp 1 to enter. Once you have completed the entire mission chain inside (which incidently gets you your very own Prismatic Converter for Capping AI) the main stations will have a mission called "Emporors Favor" repeatable once a day. This mission allows you to duel each of the colored emporors for a cash prize, as well as loot they drop.

Total Credits per day; 200 million.

Auric Sector

Auric sector has several differant ways it can be approached, but as most of them are incredibly simple it is tier 1. THe three ways are listed below.

Mine Gold By shooting the astroids that are yellow tinted and then scooping the debrise, you can get a large quantity of gold or fools gold. Both can be sold at the AI station for credits, or traded in for a daily missions. Remember, you need a mining weapon to mine astroids!

Total Credits; 35 million credits per hour for the Fools Gold mission, 6 million for gold, so maybe 60 million per hour for 500 million a day?

Cap AI The golden boy ships (Pictured right) have items on them that can be traded at Tortuga for GOld Dubloons. These dubloons can then be traded for 20 million credits each. The only problem is you have to be level 500 in order for the tradin mission to show up. Also, you are limited to 40 docked ships total, becouse reasons.

Total Credits per hour: 600 million if you have good cap bots.

Killing Ships

The ships in Auric Sector occasionally start shooting the asteroids and selling the Gold to the AI base, accruing the money in their cargo... very occasionally. Getting any money off of the ships this way requires that 1) no body has killed them recently and 2) no body has been selling gold to the ai station recently either. Highly Unlikely.

Total Credits; Maybe 100 million a day if you are lucky.

Insurance Missions

The Insurance Missions in Brigands strong hold require you to go kill half a dozen ships to claim a cash prized. The ships are easy but the prizes are small. Scalling from 2 million to 210 million per missions, i recommend doing these in tranches once you figure out what areas the ships hang out at.

Total Credits; 20 million up to 500 million per day depending on level.

Skill Items sales

Three early game zones now drop skill items, These are Vulcan with heated metals, Mira with Paxian Medallions, and Jungle with Primal Jungle Power Cores. Now players with multiple (dozen) accounts (here after referred to as "whales") Do not necessarily want to farm all those skill items for all those characters, so they will frequently buy them. While heated metals can be gotten in near infinite quantities, Paxian Medallions can only be gotten (repeatedly)from a mission in Mira that an be done once per character per day. A full account of 5 characters can get 25 medals per day, and they usually sell for 100 million credits each. Total Credits; 2.5 billion credits per day.

Blanco

Blanco is a Dungeon with three sub boss rooms in it, one for each of the Chrome ships. The first two are fairly simple, but the last one involves a full dozen Slumber CHromes, and is not for the faint of heart...or levels at least.

Total Credits; 250 million per day

Jungle

Jungle is one of the better leveling zones for level 200 to 300 players. In addition, several of the drops sell for a decent amount. Jungle Armada Crests sell for 200 to 300 million to players, and Primal Blueprints sell to AI shops for 20 million.

Total Credtis per day; 3-5 JACs and a dozen BP are about a billion a day.

Colonies

Colonies where once the best of the best, the go to passive funding source for most of the game, and are still used by most players today. The problem with using them as a free to play is that you have a very small selection of planets you can use, only Medium, Temperate, Terran unless you have someone boosting you. In order to boost a colony, a P2P player (not necessarily on your team) must put a station on the planet you are colonizing. Preferably this is someone over level 1000, thus doubling the normal Suitability of the planet.

Colonies do however require significant starting capital to get going. A starting colony at the beginning of a uni should have about 1-2 million peasants sold to it, then left for 4 weeks to grow (assuming suitability of 125%). Generally how you want to start is to get a primer colony running for a uni, and use this to fill half a dozen thatches with peasants at the end of the uni. Then, use these to create actual profitable colonies the next uni.

Colonies make profit for you by buying items like a station does, only they do it automatically. WHen you set a trade bay up for a colony, the colony will buy a certain group of items (see image right) if they are priced LOWER then then what the colony is demanding. If you price the Items higher, your base will buy them fro the colony> A simple example of this is Peasants in the image, where it says -4580. This station is buying 4580 peasants, converting them into Entertainers and Workers, and selling them back to the colony for a profit.

The reason that Colonies are this low on the list is that they have three major limitations on EF layer. 1) Very expensive to set up, 2) Requires either CA or a booster to run, and 3) promethium. There are only a half dozen prom belts in EF layer, and they are fought over fiercely. Since most of your colony incme is coming from Prometium, you need belt access to make a colony work for you, and if you are late to the uni, all the belts will be taken.

Projected income from one colony for 1 uni; With Prom belt, 10-12 billion, without Prom belt 5 billion.

Dungeon Galaxies

Dungeon Galaxies are a staple of Star Sonata, the location where ostensibly you get most of your loot from. Up until recently this was not the case for the majority of players, as the drop system was incomprehensible and this underused. Now that we have a decent drop system on wiki, this will hopefully change. DG Drops

Dungeons are relatively simple, you go through killing everything until a boss level at the end (symbolized by purple lighting bolts on the entrance warp), kill the boss, scoop its loot and credits, then move on to the next dg. Different people handle DG loot different ways. Some just sell everything to AI stations, Some set up shops to vend the items to other players, some offer the items to their team mates at market buy prices (so if a Liposuction is selling for 200 million, but being bought for 75 million, they will offer their teammates one at 80 million).

There has been two important changes in recent unis, the Bindo Drop rate was fixed and Station Gear Tokens are a thing. Previously only dropping from very high end DG, bindo now has a 10% drop rate form any DG boss. So assuming you are moving quickly, you should be able to get one bindo piece ever couple of hours or so.

Second is Station Gear Tokens. Currently selling at 150 million each, these are aquired by killing specific DG bosses. The Most easily recognized of which are the box ships, Omega Platform and Omega Battlestation which can be found in DF 300 DGs.

Total Credits per hour DGing; 150 to 200 million. With bindo 1 billion per hour.

Player Construction

Building items for other players can be very iffy depending on when in the uni it is. Titanium sheets sell well at the start and end of the uni, as players try to build stations. Things like Arson Drones and Blue Beta Drones might sell well if there is a a large influx of new players.

TOtal Credits per uni; 5 billion?

Capping Ships

Capping ships would probably be in the green bar if not for a relevant trick. Because FC get two pools of fighting bots (wild and combat), you can use one pool, the combat bots, for radiation damage dealing ships, while filling the other pool with the bots you capture. This alone would not yield a yellow rating wither, however, there is an advacned skill Called WIldman, that gives you 50% more wild bot slots, and this style of capture truely does no come into its own without it. THus, In order to cap bots at the best possible rate, you need a high level skill, so the yellow rating. If you do not mind being less effective, consider this a green item. Further,it has been pointed out that ships in DG are less likely to scoop items and thus less likely to be over hull.

Suggested ships to cap (IE appear in DG entryways and can be docked): Inferno, Blaze Inferno, Pretty Boy, Pretty Girl, Ragnarock, Space Blue Alpha, SPace Blue Beta, Space Blue Gamma, Basil.

As with DG's what you do with the items you get is entirely dependent on your play style. Some people sell everything to AI bases, however items like Basil Sheaths and Hot Good can be sold to other players for significantly more then an AI base will buy them for.

Credits per hour; Ranges from 30 ships captured for 8 million a ship, 240 million up to 50 ships captured for 60 million, 3 billion

Rumble Aug Farming

Credit to Neon Sword for discovering this. TO make this trick work, you need to do a series of things very quickly.

1) Sit on the Instance gate INSIDE rumble with no squad

2) warp into the instance

3) kill everything in the instance, scoop everything, then leave

4) QUIT THE SQUAD THAT FORMED WHEN YOU JUMPED INTO THE INSTANCE

5) repeat

This works best with Pirating 20 and a gunner with Surgical Beams, however for those of us not quite so blessed, i found that a great Vortex laser with Zen of Reach 10 is perfectly sufficient.

Credits per hour; 200 or more augmenters totaling 1.5 billion with a sub optimal set up.

Tradegoods Shop buying trick

Tortuga Missions contains a little know but valuable trick that can get you quite a lot of credits quite quickly. The AI who possess Tradegoods will sell them to your station if you set it to buy them at any price at all, in addition to things like Pirate Crests and Dark Remains. Now, in tortuga, once you are level (500?)and have completed the Barbe Rogue missions, you can do a mission called Capture Training!, that opens the Plunder Missions. The plunder missions in turn get you Gold Dubloons, which you can trade for Credits from another mission in tortuga at the rate of one dubloon per 10million credits.

So the whole system is 1) get bases to buy Tradegoods 2) Do Tortuga Barbe Rogue mission chain 3) Do Tortuga Scorched Tradebadge chain, 3) Turn in Tradegoods for Dubloons, 4) Turn in Dubloons for Credits. 5) Profit!

Its a little complicated.

There is also a mission in Sol which allows the same thing to be done with pirate crests > Enforcer Badges > Credits, but it pays alot less.

Projected profits ; About 500 million per day.

Industrial Commodities

Industrial Commodities are one of the primary funding mechanism of Wild Space (WS). Unfortunately, this guide is tailored to Earthforce layer, so they get a orange rating, due to the fact that you either need a willing trade partner who is P2p OR need to be p2p play yourself and have a trade fleet shipping the IC to wild space. ANyone telling you that IC can be hauled to wild space by a self piloted ship has no clue what they are talking about, you will die and loose all your IC before you get anywhere near a station that buys them.

Projected income assuming One character with 16 ranks in Station Management and Lots sized extraction zones on Silicon; 15 million per day.

Quick Tutorial on Base setups; Setting up bases in star sonata has been made infinity simpler in the last year, all bases now come with inbuilt energy, Shields, radar and resistances, so you no longer have to build these things while hoping random AI do not kil your base. Further, and more importantly, they have an inbuilt item giving them rations for 25 workers per hour, and 25 workers standard. SO long ask you do not add any workers or equipment to your bases, they will live forever. Thus, if you have a extract point with 15 spaces, you can drop a base, equip 15 extractors, set the trade bay up, and run bots to it hauling the resources away to your factories. This means that little to no effort is required to Harvest any resource point of "A bunch" or lower.

Important notes on Base setup;

1) Any base with more then 25 workers requires BOTH a Hydroponics (or two junkyard hydroponics) AND a MRE factory to produce rations. The number of these varies with the number of workers, the command "!rations "number of workers" on discord will tell you how many. So !rations 1200 will tell you how many Hydroponics and MRE factories you need to supply 1200 workers. REMEMBER, TWO JUNKYARD STARTER HYDRO = ONE HYDROPONICS!

2) Setting up your trade bay properly is CRITICAL! ALWAYS set a "Make Max" for ANY item you base is making, INCLUDING RATIONS AND SPACE OATS! Literally the first thing you should do after laying a base is equip the trade bay, add rations and space oats, price 1, maximum quantity 1000. Just make it a habit you get into, nothing is more annoying then trying to figure out why your not shipping any silicon only to discover all your bases are crammed to the walls with rations and cannot extract anything because they have no room. Except possibly having your base die because there where so many space oats it could not produce rations.

3) The Remote Control and Programming skills is Critical to running any extraction operation, trust me you do not want to be hauling things by hand. For lower level players the best trading ships are Massif and Roscap, Massif for large items and Roscap for smaller faster runs. for REALLY small runs (like hauling IC to wild space) Paximinus are preferable due to their high resistances and low slot usage. Also, having a bulk trader pick up only one base at a time is usually wasting space. "Dock Extract 1, buy, dock extract 2, buy, dock factory, sell, dock extract 3, buy, dock extract 4 buy, dock factory, sell" is a perfectly normal command series for a bulk tradebot.

Traginium/Dementium/ Dementium Fragmants

These Items while profitable in the right circumstances are INCREDIBLY inconsistent in their sales. Traginium can be extracted from [[[Bonnett]] and is used for a large number of skills, but as they are early skills and people tend to not need it after acquiring them, sales slump quickly if there is not a steady influx of new players. Dem Frags and Dementium are necessary to build defective bases in wild space, but is incredibly rare, coming from only a few higher level field mobs and DG Drops.

Average Income; your guess is as good as mine.

Protoplasmic

Protoplasmica is a mini dungeon focusing on Goblins, with Doc Goblin as a boss half way up. One of the reason this is even on the list is that Doc Goblin respawns VERY VERY FAST, every minute or so, allowing you to camp him for hours if you have the hull for it. The reason it is rated so low is that Doc's drops are so inconsistent that you will end up with a hold full of garbage with one or two useful items unless you bring a massif and some well built bots. People have reported that if you sit farming doc long enough, the drops improve, but I am writing that off the gamblers fallacy or law of large numbers. It is however one of the few places known to drop Nuclear Convotronic II's!

Average credits earned; your guess is as good as mine.

Faction Gear

Swabbies, Buccaneers, Condemned, Doomed, Enforcers, Constables, there are several sets of build-able gear in game. Unfortunately they are all at early levels and thus do not sell well in a game where most players are over level 1000. A few items miht sell somewhat well, Sergent's enforcers are sometime uses as trade or combat bots, and you can trade Enforcers crests for a neurotweek. Infernal Batteries are one of the best mid tech reactors in the game for bank, and rumors insist there will be a use for large numbers of infernal cells in the near future. Other then that, there is really not much demand for these items.

Average Earnings; Your guess is as good as mine.

Copper Dungeon

Copper Dungeon is hands down the best source of Damage Augmenters in the game, and the only source of Hostile Augmenters. Unfortunately, the AI are strongly resistant to anything except Energy Damage and tend to swarm in large groups, making copper runs very risky, even when well prepared.

Expected Credits; Your guess is as good as mine.

Prospecting

There are many layers where prospecting will yield significant rewards. Earthforce is not one of them. I have frequently searched 30 galaxies to find two nodes totaling less then 150 million in resources. Quite often i will simply find nothing.

Expected credits; Nothing