ESCAPE VELOCITY NOVA
Making Money FAQ
by Sephiroth Katana (http://www.rpgclassics.com)

INTRODUCTION
============

One problem that I run into fairly often when I play Escape Velocity Nova is
not having enough money to buy the best ships and outfits. This is especially
problematic in the Polaris campaign, where the outfits are amazing, but cost
millions of credits. But it also comes up in the beginning of the game, when
I'm trying to get out of my shuttle and into a better ship, and later when I
get access to the Sigma upgrades. After going through many different ways to
make money in EV Nova, I decided to write this FAQ to summarize them. I don't
claim to have an exhaustive or definitive list here, but maybe it'll give you
some ideas.

MAKING MONEY IN EV NOVA
=======================

1. Fuel refills (2,000 credits)

Sometimes, a civilian Valkyrie will hail you and ask for assistance. If you
hail it back, you get an option to give it one jump's worth of fuel for
2,000 credits. Just move close to the Valkyrie and try to board it, and you'll 
automatically get the money.

The money is small, but it's actually not a bad thing to do early on, because
it requires so little time. You get much more out of it than the amount of
fuel and effort that you spend. So, consider this a little bonus.

2. Gambling (4,000 credits)

Since the odds of winning seem to be low, gambling is very unreliable, and
you should probably never do it. Just like in real life.

3. Passengers (5,000 credits)

Passengers are the easiest type of delivery to make, because they take up
almost no cargo space. However, the reward is also small. Early on, you only
get 5,000 credits for each group of passengers that you transport, which really
isn't worth the time to ferry them to their destination.

In the Vell-os and Polaris campaigns, you can get passenger missions that pay a
little more (around 15,000 credits), but that money is useless to the Vell-os,
and nowhere near enough for the Polaris, so even then, it's not really worth
bothering yourself. Basically, you should only take a passenger mission if
you see a better-paying mission to the same system on the same Mission BBS.

4. Regular deliveries (10,000 - 20,000 credits)

Very early on, regular deliveries are probably the best way to make money. You
can reliably get 10,000 credits, and you only need to make one trip, unlike
the shipping missions. If you have the cargo space, regular deliveries will
probably be the most efficient way to make money after asteroid mining in
the early game.

5. Small bounties (22,500 credits)

As soon as you start building up your combat rating, you can get the intro
mission for the Bounty Hunters' Guild side quest. After that mission, you'll
be able to see small bounties on Federation Mission BBSes. Each bounty gets
you 22,500 credits.

Small bounties are a great way to make money, if you know how to do them
right. If you pick up a bounty in a certain system, the ship that you have
to destroy will not appear in that system, but rather, in one of the adjacent
systems. This means that you should never pick up a bounty in systems like
Nesre Primus, Kerella or Tichel, all of which have many adjoining systems.
Instead, go to a system with only one neighbour, like Wolf 359 or Rimshot.
Then, the target ship is guaranteed to appear in the lone neighbouring
system (in this case, Sol or Lalande).

To make it even easier, you can choose your location such that the
neighbouring system has a big Federation defense fleet. Wolf 359 is good for
this, since it's right next to Sol. Pick up all the bounties that are listed,
then fly to Sol and watch the defense fleet waste the pirates, then collect
all the money.

6. Escort services / special deliveries (30,000 credits)

If you build up your combat rating a little, sometimes freighters will hail you
and ask you to escort them to a certain system. The pay is better than for a
delivery, and it doesn't use up any space. You will get chased by a couple of
pirates if you accept the offer. However, when you enter a system, there will
be some delay before the pirates jump in after you, so you can use that time
to fly to the destination and land before they get close enough to fire. Or
you can just blow them up, it's not hard by that point.

Sometimes, a freighter will also ask you to complete a cargo delivery. This
is like the escort mission, but without the pirates. Overall, a nice little
bonus, but sadly it appears randomly.

7. Equipment delivery (30,000 credits)

This is like a regular delivery with a slightly higher payoff. To get
access to these missions, you have to complete the first missions in 
the Sigma, GLi-Tech, and terraforming side quests. The missions only
require 10 tons of cargo space, but the pay is really not that much, so
by the time you get access to them, you'll already need much more money
than you can get this way. Avoid.

8. United Shipping regular deliveries (10,000 - 50,000 credits)

You should definitely do the United Shipping intro mission when you get a
chance (it appears at random on Federation planets), because it opens up the
door to high-paying missions down the road. However, the regular deliveries
that you get access to early on are not the best option, because you need
to make two trips for a single mission. On the plus side, these missions
require very little cargo space, so you may not have many other options if
your ship is small.

Basically, ignore any United Shipping mission where the pay is less than
25,000 credits. Sometimes, relatively rarely, you can see a regular United
Shipping delivery for 50,000 credits. Usually, this happens when there are
many United Shipping missions listed on a single BBS; just look at the ones
toward the end of the list.

Eventually, you can get a mission to help United Shipping expand its
business into the Auroran Empire. After doing this, you'll be able to do
regular deliveries inside the Empire, but they won't pay any more than they
do inside the Federation. However, you should still do the intro mission
at least, since that opens up the door to United Shipping Long Deliveries,
which are a whole different story (and discussed separately, further down).

9. Special missions (about 50,000 credits each)

While you're flying around Federation space, you'll probably get the
opportunity to do the space probe, band escort, and Sigma missions. Each
one gets you about 50,000 credits, give or take. This is a good way to
replenish your money supply, but unfortunately, all of these missions are
one-time deals.

10. Rush deliveries / urgent deliveries (30,000 - 60,000 credits)

These are like the regular deliveries, but with a time limit. The urgent
deliveries have a tighter limit than the rush deliveries, but they pay more.
Unfortunately, by the time you start to see these, the rewards won't really
be enough to warrant the trouble. 

The 60,000 rewards are still good enough to spend the time, if the destination
is reasonably close. However, they tend to require a lot of cargo space. Some 
urgent deliveries require less than 10 tons of space, but they only pay 40,000
credits, which is probably not worth the effort.

11. Rescue operations (75,000 credits)

Sometimes, you will see derelict ships, which your mini-map shows as gray dots.
If you highlight them, you will see the label, "Drifting Derelict." If you
board these ships, sometimes you will get an offer to ferry the crew to a
certain system for 75,000 credits. Basically, this is a really high-paying
passenger mission, and it is possibly the best way to make money in the early-
to-mid game. (Asteroid mining has a higher payoff, but is very boring.)

There's no way to predict where the derelicts will be. I seem to run into
them most often in systems that are close to Sol. Nesre Primus, Arcturus,
and Tichel tend to have many derelicts. Something like Lalande or South
Manchester is too far off. Sometimes the empty systems between Koria and
Federation space will also have derelicts.

Unfortunately, sometimes, instead of the monetary offer, you will get attacked
by pirates. If this happens, just run back to the spaceport or jump out of
the system, whichever is more convenient. The pirates will not reappear when
you come back.

By the way, if there is a pirate ship in the same system with you, it can
board the derelict before you, thus depriving you of the rescue mission.
So, you might want to take out any pirates that may be close before you
board the derelict.

12. Transporting colonists (75,000 credits)

If you complete the terraforming side quest, you'll be able to access these
missions. You can pick up colonists on any Federation planet. The destination
will always be the new Nirvana planet in Procyon, so you can pick up a few
batches of colonists before moving them all to the same place. The pay is
quite good. The only problem is that, if you do complete the terraforming
quest, it'll probably be fairly late in the game, by which time 75,000
credits is no longer sufficient. This is, however, the third best way to
make money that can be found on a Mission BBS.

13. Medium bounties / large bounties (45,000 - 135,000 credits)

As you advance the Bounty Hunters' Guild quest (this involves expanding
the Guild's operations inside Auroran and Polaris territory), you get access
to the medium and large bounties. The medium bounties work exactly like the
small ones, only the target ships are more powerful, and you have to disable
them rather than destroy them. This automatically makes them useless, because
you won't be able to use the local defense fleets to get the bounty for you.
In fact, the defense fleets will make things more difficult, because they'll
usually destroy the target ship after you disable it, thus failing the
mission for you.

However, the large bounties again require you to destroy the target ship.
This time, you are told which system the target ship is hiding in. Usually,
it's a Manticore or Pirate Carrier. Of course, you need a powerful ship of 
your own if you want to do the work yourself, or you can easily use the 
local defense fleets to do it for you. Large bounties are one of the 
easiest ways to make a lot of money late-game.

14. Asteroid mining (150,000 credits)

I always end the early game by buying an Asteroid Miner and doing enough
mining to buy a Mod Starbridge. That changes the game completely, and makes
it much more fun, but getting to that part is tedious. You can make a lot of
money by mining, but even if you know what to do, it's really boring.

Basically, you need to mine opals, which can be found, for example, in the
Fomalhaut system. You need to have some Mining Lasers and the Asteroid Scoop
to do this; the Asteroid Miner comes with all the necessary equipment. Just
fly around until you see a dark asteroid with some gold colouring, like gold
splotches on the gray surface. Then shoot this asteroid until it falls apart
into little round rocks, then fly into the rocks to collect them. Repeat
until your cargo space is filled up. Then fly to the Lotus system and sell
all the opals you've mined, then go back to Fomalhaut and repeat. The
Asteroid Miner has 100 tons of cargo space, and you can get about 150,000
credits for 100 tons of opals. You can also sell opals on Gem in Fomalhaut,
but there the price is lower, so you'll only get about 100,000 credits.

This is a very easy way to make money. Unfortunately, the Asteroid Miner
is a very slow and unwieldy ship. It takes time to find the right asteroids,
and even when you blow them up, it's difficult to move the stupid ship in
order to collect the opals. You may need to do some mining in order to get
a nice combat ship, but it's not really something that you'll want to
return to. Sure, you can put Mining Lasers and an Asteroid Scoop on some
other ship, but if you have a better ship, you probably won't want to
come back to asteroid mining in the first place.

15. United Shipping Long Deliveries (100,000 - 500,000 credits)

After you've expanded United Shipping operations inside the Auroran Empire,
you can get the opportunity to do long deliveries. This involves picking
up some cargo inside the Federation (or inside the Empire), and transporting
it to a destination inside the Empire (or the Federation). As you can see,
this type of mission requires much more traveling than regular United
Shipping deliveries. To make matters worse, you have a fairly strict time
limit.

It's usually not worth doing these, but there is one exception. Sometimes,
you can come across a long delivery worth 500,000 credits. It will also have
a strict time limit, plus you will forfeit the mission if you get scanned
by any Auroran ships (it's a smuggling mission, basically). But the payoff
is the highest you can get for any mission on the BBS. I recommend taking
these high-paying missions, but doing the Sigma side quest beforehand so
you have access to the Hypergates. This will help you make the deadlines.

16. Piracy (300,000 - 800,000 credits)

Of course, one really good way to make money is to steal it from others.
But you can't make a lot of money by pirating helpless traders. You need
to rob large capital ships. Of course, a Federation Carrier is carrying
huge amounts of money, but it takes some work to bring down, and what's
worse, doing so will ruin your legal status in Federation space.

So, if you want to be a pirate without becoming a wanted criminal, the
only solution is to pirate other pirates. I recommend hanging out in Scheall
or in one of the adjacent systems, and waiting for a Manticore or a Pirate
Carrier to show up. If you can disable and board them, you can make off with
a lot of money. If you're doing the Polaris campaign, this is the way to go,
because you can completely wreck Manticores and Carriers with just a little
Zephyr. This will also build up your combat rating.

Another option is to find one of the hero ships (a ship with a name, e.g.
"Paul Pentecost") and attack it. Robbing a hero ship can get you millions of
credits, much more than robbing regular pirates. But hero ships are very
tough, plus you'll ruin your endgame by destroying them. There's also a
second pirate system (Houseless in Auroran space), but those guys don't
really have much money, so, Manticores and Pirate carriers from Scheall are
your best bet.

17. Selling stuff you don't need (up to 1,000,000+ credits)

It sounds like a no-brainer. If you buy a new ship, and it comes with a
bunch of extra outfits that you don't really need, you should sell them to
make some easy cash. For example, you can sell off those worthless Radar
Missiles and Radar Missile Launchers that every ship seems to come with.
That's easy.

But sometimes, you might not know that you can save a lot of money by
selling something and buying something more efficient. For example, in the
Polaris campaign, the Scarab battleship comes with an Anti-Matter Reactor,
which restores your fuel at a fast rate. Well, you can sell off the reactor
for 2.5 million credits, then buy four Solar Panels for 60,000 credits and
achieve exactly the same effect. Not bad, huh?

18. High-volume trading (up to 1,000,000+ credits)

The only problem with high-volume trading is that it takes a lot of money to
make any money with it. You need to buy a bunch of Cambrians, use them as 
escorts, then fly back and forth between various systems, buying low and 
selling high. For instance, you can buy opals on Gem in Fomalhaut and
sell them on Serenity in Lotus. Or you can buy lizard pelts on Vrenna in 
Outbound and sell them on Water Moon in Wittor.

Unfortunately, in order to do this, you first need enough money to afford
your escort fleet, and then you need enough money to fill up all that cargo
space with goods. So, you basically need to have millions of credits going
into trading in order to be good at it. Just like in real life. So, this
is probably not a great choice.

19. Planetary domination (daily income)

To dominate a planet, you need to achieve a combat rating of at least "Deadly."
Anything less won't work. Then, go to any inhabited system, hail that planet
the way you usually do when bribing the spaceport to let you land, and instead
of offering a bribe, demand tribute. They will send out a defense fleet of
about 120 ships. They'll come at you six at a time, and you need to destroy
them all. After that, hail the planet and demand tribute again, and you'll
dominate it. 

It takes about an hour of fighting to dominate a planet, and it's really quite 
a tedious process. What's worse, if you dominate a planet under a certain
government (say, a Federation planet), then you will become a wanted criminal
in every planet with the same government. So, you pretty much have to conquer
the entire Federation if you want to dominate any Federation planets. Of
course, it's easier if you dominate Vrenna in Outbound, Harbor in Scheall,
or Houseless in Kipa, since they aren't affiliated with any other planets.
But even then, the fighting isn't really that fun.

The reason to do this is mostly for extra challenge, but if you succeed in
dominating a planet, then you will get a daily income. For example, if you
dominate Vrenna in Outbound, you will get 2,500 credits per day after that.
Of course, the more planets you dominate, the more money you make. But if you
can really dominate the whole galaxy, you probably don't really need any more
money...

THE END
=======

Escape Velocity Nova is copyrighted by Ambrosia Software, 2002-2009.
This FAQ is copyrighted by Sephiroth Katana, 2009.