Guide to funding, income, and credits
This is an open guide, please feel free to revise and update this guide as necessary.
Contents
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 200 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 Ingots and the Bars (Pictured right) have items on them that can be traded at junkyard for scrapnotes. Scrapnotes are generally in high demand at the beginning and end of universes, as they can be used to purchase junkyard hydroponics that builders need to keep their mining stations alive. A short afternoon of work should get you about 10 bars and 10 ingots for a total of 30 scrapnotes.
Total Credits: 20 ships, 30 notes, 1 billion credits on resale.
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.
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 incomprehensable 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 liit and credtis, then move on to the next dg. Different people handle DG loot different ways. Soe just sell everything to AI stations, Some keep the Junkyard Scrappable items and sell the scrap notes, 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).
Total Credits per hour DGing; 150 to 200 million.
Player Construction
Building items for other players can be very iffy depending on when in he 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 day; 30 ships captured for 8 million a ship, 240 million
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 800, 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.
