Earning credits
There is one wallet and everything comes out of it: fuel, hull repairs, the workshop and whatever you lose at the tables. A full fit-out is 51,200 credits and the campaign pays 29,700, so about a third of the ship has to come from somewhere else.
Where the money is
Three sources, in order of how reliable they are. Campaign missions pay a fixed fee on completion and only on completion — they are the backbone and they run out. Contracts off the job board keep coming forever and are where the fit-out money is. The tables at The Lucky Strike are not income; they are a way of finding out how you feel about variance.
Know what a bay of ore is worth
Value per unit is only half of it — the other half is mass, which is what changes how the ship handles and how much fuel the trip costs. Osmium is genuinely dense: a small load is heavy and worth the trip. Aggregate is nearly free, so the money in it is in moving an enormous amount of it.
| Mineral | Credits / unit | kg / unit | Full stock bay | Full extended bay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Osmium | 240 | 62 | 31,200 cr | 69,600 cr |
| Subsurface Ice | 72 | 21 | 9,360 cr | 20,880 cr |
| Hematite | 46 | 38 | 5,980 cr | 13,340 cr |
| Aggregate | 18 | 26 | 2,340 cr | 5,220 cr |
Those are ceilings, not quotes. No mine hands you a pure bay — every claim has an ore mix, and the osmium-heavy seams are the far ones. The richest osmium on the shelf is Widowmaker: "Best osmium on the shelf. Named for a reason."
The best-paying campaign missions
The ramp is authored rather than computed — it climbs with distance and with constraint, so the jobs that pay most are the ones with a deadline, a fragile load, or a long way to go and back.
| # | Mission | Pay |
|---|---|---|
| 16 | Something Is Burning | 3,000 cr |
| 11 | The Other Cowboy | 2,400 cr |
| 13 | Under the Horizon | 2,400 cr |
| 15 | A Room With A View | 2,400 cr |
| 8 | The Good Stuff | 2,200 cr |
Five things that actually make you money
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Finish the mission you took
Pay is on completion and never on failure. A job flown three-quarters of the way is worth exactly nothing, so when the deadline is tight the right call is often to fly it cleanly and lose the bonus rather than push it and lose the fee.
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Stop paying the hull shop
Repairs are the quietest drain in the game because they never appear as a bill you chose. Reinforced skids raise the safe descent rate step by step, and the first level costs less than one mid-campaign fee. See the landing guide.
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Fit the bay before you fit anything glamorous
Ore pay scales directly with units per trip. Going from 130 to 290 units is more than double the money for the same flight — and a heavier ship to set down, which is the trade you are making.
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Buy fuel at the far claims instead of flying home for it
The mid and far mines sell fuel on the pad; the near ones do not. A tank topped up out on the shelf turns a there-and-back into two hauls.
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Work the job board once the campaign closes
Contracts come in batches of three and carry the same tags the campaign does — deadline, fragile, race, survey, night rate. The tagged ones pay more for the same distance, which is the whole trade.
About the casino
Blackjack with splits and doubles, and a thirty-seven-pocket roulette wheel. The house edge is the real one, so over any number of sessions this is a way of converting credits into a story rather than into a ship. Fly out to The Lucky Strike because it is a good flight at night, and gamble with money you have already decided to lose.