The Spoiler-Free New Game Strategy Guide for ΔV: What to Buy First and 3 Steps to 1M E$ per 15 Minutes

Are you wondering what to do with that first 20,000 E$ you get with your starter ship? Did you go out to get yourself some ore, find the rings depressingly empty, and think that there has to be more to ring life than this? Are you wondering how you're ever going to afford one of those pricey ships, much less make 1,000,000 E$ in 15 minutes? Well, this strategy guide will answer those questions as simply as possible.

NOTICE: This guide is abbreviated, and originally comes from the Steam Guides section of ΔV's Steam community page. It was originally created by NimrodX. Feel free to send your appreciation on the Discord or on the original guide post.

Introduction

ΔV is a game that isn't always clear and up-font about what options you have or what you're supposed to do. It's designed to not be "hand-holdy" at all so you can get the true ringa experience of just running into stuff while mining, and not having anyone following you around giving constant advice.

This guide is dedicated to two things: pointing out some of the most important tips that people usually miss at first and even after 10s of hours, and reducing the amount of trial-and-error needed to figure out what to do after that.

If you feel a bit stumped, this guide is especially for you because I'm going to cover the most important things that aren't supposed to be secrets but people tend to miss them at first.

Specific story lines and such are not covered, and you'll be able to find all of those on your own easily anyway once you get the idea of how the game works and how to make money needed for the next upgrade you want.

The controls aren't covered, and I only have a little bit to say about piloting techniques. This is mostly a tactics/strategy guide. It's mostly for those completely new to the game, but it can be useful even if you have been playing a game for 100 hours. That's because there are still probably some things that you may still have missed, just like I did after all that time.

The guide contains the following sections:

Getting Started sections: What to do with your starting money and what to upgrade first after you bring back your first load of ore.
Ship Upgrade Phase 1: Your first (very early and cheap) upgrade from the standard K37 TNTRL, and how to go about upgrading or buying ships in general.
Ship Upgrade Phase 2: The Cothon-217 "Bender" that can bring in 1-4M E$ in one dive, and suggestions on how to use it.
Ship Upgrade (optional) Phase 2.5: The Obonto OCP-209, a bit of a detour from maximizing income but a good utility ship to be familiar with.
Ship Upgrade Phase 3: The Broadsides PDMG monster Titan that brings in 1M E$ in a single 15 minute (playtime) dive. This is the least important section because it's not really necessary to use this, but it's a good example of how money is no longer a major problem after a certain point.
Example Game: Link to another guide documenting a test game where this guide is essentially put to the test.

Though I provide my best attempt at a "fast track" of upgrades to big bucks here, it isn't really necessary to follow it. I mostly came up with this for my attempts to test the experimental version where I wanted to speed through normal gameplay, but not use hacks. But then I realized that anyone feeling a bit stuck somewhere might find it useful.

But overall, the best way to play the game is just tinker with everything and do whatever you want. This is just here to help when you need it.

Getting Started Fast

20,000 E$ and a K37 TNTRL

So what are you supposed to do with this money? It's not enough to buy any equipment except impact absorbers and cargo hold baffles (which you will later discover to be pretty useless).

Hire Minimum-Wage Crew First

The first thing to do before anything else is hire crew. Your ship is already about as set as it can be for your first dive into the rings, except for the crew. Think of them like ship modules that add functions to the ship if it helps any, but unlike equipment you can actually afford to hire some.

The first thing to know is that you can just hire the cheapest no education no experience person in each specialization. Some specializations are more important than others, but you don't need skilled crew because they will learn on the job, and even if they get paid monthly they never seem to ask for a raise if kept happy. So starting with the cheapest ones possible will save lots of E$ in the long run.

Because there might not be any cheap ones available in every single position for your first dive, here's a list of the jobs in order of priority with most valuable first and least useful last:

Astrogator - This is your fast travel and tactical lidar operator. They keep track of waypoints and also identify objects detected by the lidar. Without an astrogator, a pirate or a mine is practically invisible on lidar, so this is arguably the most critical position.
Geologist - This specialty identifies ore chunks and appraises their value. They will plot boxes around each chunk on the screen so you know what to collect first and what to ignore. They can also filter the display by mineral type and chunk value.
Mechanic - This crewmember determines your maximum ship repair ability on the station and your ability to compensate for damage in flight. They're useful even sitting in the station because they will skill up when you repair your ship there, and each additional mechanic reduces repair time in a 2/(1+n) manner.
Pilot - This is the least useful crewmember to have and in fact some people skip hiring a pilot initially, but I will recommend hiring one just to get them started with gaining skill. All they do is activate adrenal slowdown automatically when you're about to hit something. They're more useful for larger ships or when traveling very fast, but they are also good for novice players in any ship.

Hire one in each position for 5,000 E$ or less if available. Sometimes you get lucky and can get one for 500 E$ but that's not too common. Again, don't worry about them having no skill, only worry about you paying as little as possible.

First Dive Advice

Perhaps the strangest thing about this game is that things don't just disappear into a perfectly secure cargo hold in your ship, they float in there and can bounce out. Managing this issue takes some getting used to, but once you do then it won't seem nearly as annoying.

First tip here is to avoid cargo bay baffles because they can get jammed and they reduce the amount of ore you can bring back. Feel free to try them anyway but you will probably come to the same conclusion.

Here are some tips on how to keep the chunks in the back: To throw everything to the back, just put the ship in reverse at about 5 m/s then hit the stop (stationkeeping) button (keyboard: X key). This is exactly like backing up a car and suddenly slamming on the breaks. Everyone and everything in the car will get thrown backwards.

Another tip is when chasing a chunk, don't try to slow down while moving toward it and open your hold. Instead, use the autopilot to wheel around in front of it (block its path of travel), turn your ship toward it so you're flying backwards, then open the hold and slam on the breaks. Everything including the rock you're catching will get thrown to the back of the hold. You can try catching it from other directions if you only accelerate and don't slow down until the bay is closed again.

Look for opportunities to thrust forwards when possible, like spin around and stop using forward thrust.

Dive to the Edge

In the beginning it's best to dive to the 0km outer edge of the ring. The fastest option will be Hohmann transfer since this will put you down at the closest outer point at the current game time. Later when you have places to Astrogate (fast travel) to you'll probably want to use "manual" to select a location on the ring edge closest to where you're going. Anywhere but the edge costs money and has limited accuracy.

Talk to Arriving NPC Miners

This is the biggest thing you can do to get into the rest of the game faster!

After arriving at the ring edge, you will first see nothing except some sparse iceroids, and you've probably already figured out you want to head to the right, deeper into the ring, to find better mining. So for now, go ahead and start slowly heading that way using the autopilot.

But about 15 seconds after you arrive you will see another ship on the lidar. This is going to be another miner entering the rings, and you can hail them on the radio.

Go to the OMS (onboard maintenance) screen (J key) and go to the Pilot tab. You will see a row of info on the other ship. Hit the button to Hail the ship.

Feel free to try out all the options, but there is one very important option that I want to mention because it took me 100+ hours to really figure it out.

If one if your crew recognizes the captain of the other ship, select that option.

The other ship will respond. The conversation always goes something like this with the same number of lines:

Jane Doe, Geologist: Joebob? (selected option)

Jane Doe, as I live and breathe. [XYZ-1234]

(At this point, exit the OMS panel so time will return to normal speed.)

Do you have contact with Leroy? [Jane Doe, Geologist] Leroy Jenkins?

No, he left a few months back. [XYZ-1234]

And that's where it completely ends.

This "banter" conversation can be either friendly or hostile.

If the conversation sounds friendly, then you have about 30 seconds max after it ends to open the OMS (J) to chime in with a new option at the bottom of the lower pane: "Do you know of any trade opportunities out here?"

Select that option and they will usually, but not always, provide a "big lidar contact" waypoint that you can fast travel to using the Astrogator tab in the OMS. This is valuable because it usually takes much longer to get these.

The process looks like this:

A "big lidar contact" is always going to be a moonlet or structure. The most useful thing to find initially will be Obonto Habitats, but even a moonlet with nothing on it is good because it's a fast travel point deeper into the rings.

Don't astrogate to this waypoint just yet though because, about 30 seconds after the first miner appears, another one appears and you will be able to attempt to repeat this process. This will likely get you another waypoint if 1) a crew member recognizes the other captain, 2) they aren't a hated or disgruntled former employee, and 3) you speak up in time.

Initial Dive Completion

More About NPCs

After talking to both ships you might notice some options to hire them as a "wingman". You might be too broke at this point to pay them, but usually it's worth even 20,000 E$ to hire one or more because they will follow you around and collect ore for you. They will usually collect more than whatever you paid them as long as you don't return to the station too early or get them upset by hitting them with a mass driver round. They will do this for free if your standing is high enough with them for some reason.

The only drawback is that they're somewhat prone to hitting you with their mass drivers and thrust plumes, so if you hire one then break up some roids for them to collect then move 300-400m or so away to do the rest of the mining. In other words try to keep them distracted with flying ore chunks somewhere nearby but not exactly where you are.

While you will encounter NPC miners at random later, these two miner ships that always seem to spawn when you arrive at the ring edge will not keep showing up forever. After three months of in-game time, they will stop showing up. They're basically your intro NPCs. So keep looking for other NPCs to talk to. There is almost always some benefit to trying to converse with them.

Where To Now?

Astrogate to a Waypoint

If you managed to get a waypoint or two then go ahead and use the Astrogation panel to go there. If there's a moonlet or habitat then move within 500m of it and it will get logged as a persistent waypoint that you will be able to return to repeatedly. (Things like "big lidar contact" or "radar anomaly" are temporary waypoints that can only be used once, so you need to find and move close to a large "POI" object of some sort to get one that persists for longer.)

Even if you find a barren moonlet, fast traveling to one is faster than trying to fly 10km or more past the fuzzy fringe area of the ring in real time to get to better roids, or paying station insertion fees. Wherever you end up, you will most likely end up in a better mining area.

Or Fly 10km Heading 90 Degrees

If you didn't get a waypoint (which can happen) then just keep flying on a heading of 90 degrees (to the right) for at least 10km until you get past the shallow fuzzy fringe and into the denser roids. Maybe there you'll run into a NPC who will give you a waypoint, or maybe a crewmember will spot something on long range lidar, but even if not you can still make enough money collecting ore chunks in an average area like this.

Note: Simply going deeper into the rings doesn't get you more valuable ore. Once you're past the fuzzy edge, the only reason to keep going is to look for a better spot or other things, but mining won't necessarily get more profitable just because you flew deeper. Once past the fuzzy edge, roid value will depend almost entirely on specific location rather than depth.

Collect Ore Chunks

So shoot some roids, torch some roids even, excavator chomp some roids, and use autopilot as best you can to collect the highest value, closest ore chunks until your hold is full or fuel has almost run out. I would advise against chasing Be because it's never worth the time, fuel, or repair bills. Don't be hypnotized by the E$ signs into wasting time or bashing up the ship. Be isn't really that big of a deal, but you can collect it later if you want with better equipment.

If you think that having to fly around to scoop up each chunk individually with the cargo hold door is annoying then don't worry, you won't have to do this anymore as long as you bring back a mostly full hold of ore.

Talk to NPCs as you encounter them, but don't get too distracted from the number 1 goal right now which is try to bring back at least 100,000 E$ of raw ore. That's a decent haul for an initial dive and will help you get a much needed upgrade: the AR-1500 Manipulator Arm. This by itself will make the next dive much faster and easier, and maybe even 5x or more as profitable if you can recover a ship to sell.

Be On the Lookout for Random NPCs (and Pirates)

Even on the first dive some NPCs could be worth talking to. Give it a shot and try all the options.

The only exception is pirates which you probably want to ignore if you can. They show up as "UIO" in the pilot tab, have no transponder, and may be able to sneak up on your inexperienced astrogator. Here are some tips for dealing with them:

First try to avoid them, if you see them in time. They may be fighting other ships and too busy to bother you.
Don't hail them unless they hail you first. If they do hail you they will try to extort money. Early on it can be worth "loaning" them some money because later you're going to get payback, several times over, one way or the other. But right now you're probably dead broke or close to it.
Even if they hail you, sometimes they could leave you alone for free for some reason so try negotiation options.
Finally, you're left with no choice but to fight them off:
- Don't panic. Most of them are not that tough and the starter ship is quite capable of beating them.
- Stay pointed at them no matter what because you don't want them to hit your main torch or reactor. The front of the ship is the least bad place to get hit.
- But don't target them with the autopilot because this will make it too difficult to control the ship, especially if they start running.
- You can try some evasion if you want, but don't get your ship going so fast you hit roids. For example, back away but not too fast, or just move around, but keep pointed at them.
- Keep shooting at them if you're lined up enough to hit. The starting ship mass driver can still easily cause them a reactor leak which will cause them to start running away, disable their ship, or usually both. This usually takes more than one, but not very many, hits depending on where you hit them.
- Just try to hit them anywhere though and don't worry about specific hit locations. They aren't some "boss" that's immune to damage everywhere but some weak point.
- Don't forget to compensate for damage in the OMS Mechanic Tab, especially if the damage is a reactor leak or jammed fuel rods. Time will slow down when you bring up the OMS, so you don't need to be super fast at this, just not super slow.
- If they microwave you then your HUD will shut off and your autopilot won't work, but you can still use manual thrust controls. When you're not that skilled with manual controls, just rotate only and keep pointing at them and shooting them. One of the dumbest things they can do is try to hit you with only microwaves while you completely trash their ship with several mass driver rounds, so this is more of an opportunity to easily take them out than anything else.With any luck you'll either get them to leave you alone, or chase them away. If you get their reactor leaking they'll soon start to flee and, when all their remass has leaked out, their turbine won't work anymore and their ship will shut down. You can't tow their disabled ship back yet, but if you want you can blast them with your main torch, or even RCS thrusters, and bring back the lifepod that appears after their reactor explodes. Just the lifepod is worth a decent amount of money.

Astrogate Back to Enceladus

Come to a full stop away from other objects and use the Astrogator tab to return to Enceladus. If you got more than 100k E$ then good job! If you got more than 150k then excellent job. But even just 50k E$ is "good enough for now" job.

Equipment Repairs and Upgrades

After astrogating back to the station, just sell all your ore. Now isn't the time to get picky about market prices. Hopefully you have at least 100,000 E$ now and can buy some useful upgrades. But first lets handle...

Repairs

Lucky for you, you start with a separate "insurance" account balance of 100,000 E$. So repairs won't cost you any of what you just earned.

The main advice right now is: only repair stuff, don't replace anything. Things only really need to be 70% repaired because that's what will cause them to get marked "OK" for passing launch inspection and they will work well enough even when not at 100% new.

You will notice that some things are cheap to repair and some are more expensive. Keep an eye on the replacement cost and how much it drops each time you do a repair. This replacement cost is based on the cost of the replacement minus the trade-in value of the damaged item, which means that you want the replacement cost to decrease by more than the cost of a repair each time you make a repair.

Many things can be repaired to 90% before repairs add less value than the repair cost and some things can even be repaired to 95% before this happens. Some things are not worth repairing until they're half destroyed, some things are never worth repairing but should just be replaced when replacement cost increases to the cost of one repair, and some things never really make any sense to replace unless beyond repair (like a reactor).

Your lack of mechanic's skill will limit your repairs for now, which will usually keep you from being able to "over repair" anything anyway, so the main thing is to avoid buying replacements. Again, 100% repaired is neither needed or even normal in this game. Everything is a bit beat up all the time.

"Insurance"

You don't absolutely need more insurance immediately, but after another dive or two you might want to put more money into this. I buy as much as possible at every opportunity and I still run out.

This isn't really insurance. It's more like you pre-pay for repair and replacement costs at a 50% discount. So if you go to Jameson's Insurance under station Services and spend 50,000 E$, you get 100,000 E$ added to your "insurance" balance.

You can only do this once a month at the station, but NPC salvage/rescue ships out in the rings will offer more opportunities to buy repair credit if you hail them and ask about parts.

First Equipment Upgrade

Buy The Manipulator Arm!

The first thing you should buy with your new money is the AR-1500 Manipulator Arm which goes on the high-stress hardpoint.

This by far is the single most useful thing you can possibly buy at the start because not only will it speed up collecting ore chunks, but it can also grab derelict ships (worth 250,000-1,000,000 E$ each), and enable towing them back to the station, even when crew members can't fly them back. It can also tow back ships that you manage to disable which are never recoverable by sending out a crew member.

So this is a big money making enabler for you with your low budget operation right now.

The arm will automatically grab things. To load a chunk into the hold, just open the excavator door and the arm will try load it. If the arm misses the cargo door due to ship acceleration etc, just let the button go for a second to let it stabilize and try again. To claim a "fair game" disabled ship, just astrogate back to the station while the arm is holding the ship.

To make the arm release whatever it is holding and fold itself up above the ship, turn it off in the OMS Mechanic tab or hit the corresponding number key to turn off the slot. You don't have to travel with it folded up, but this could make it easier to maneuver and it's more important for some ships especially when attempting fast or evasive maneuvers,

Other Big Upgrades

Fill Missing Crew Positions

if you still have any crew positions that aren't filled, try to hire them now. Same as before, hire as cheaply as possible. Your dive will have taken you 4 days to get to the rings and probably almost as much to get back, so there should be new job candidates available.

Entertain Crew Until Smiley

Every crew member should have a bouncing smiley face icon next to them at all times. If they don't then go to The Twins in the Services menu, stay at the cheap capsule hotel, and repeat until this happens. These ringas are pretty simpleminded and enough drinking and weird cyberpunk partying will eventually get them happy.

Unhappy crew will do their jobs slowly, or not at all, and will ask for raises every time they think of an excuse. Happy ones will never ask for raises and will do everything as quickly as possible. Mine never ask for a raise even if only paid 500 E$/month.

There may be other places you can find out there to keep them happy for even less money, but The Twins plus cheap hotel is as good as brainwashing. The other expensive options such as the Moonview Hotel or SkyDome Resort aren't required.

Microwave Generator

You likely will not be able to afford it yet, but get a MWG Microwave Generator as soon as you can. Mass drivers aren't very good for breaking small roids because they send the ore chunks flying too fast, and this slows down collection.

The MWG will release the chunks at much lower speed making them easier to collect, and it doesn't need ammo, but it isn't as useful for combat as a mass driver or what i will describe after this next section. So if possible, equip the MWG in addition to even the cheapest mass driver.

Reactor, Turbine, and Ultracapacitor Upgrades

Power Equipment doesn't serve a purpose by itself, but you will notice that some things are going to require more heat or electricity, especially the next item that I will mention.

Use the "Minding simulation" (under Tuning) to test out ship equipment to make sure you can use a MWG and thrusters at the same time, for example. If not then you need a reactor core, turbine, and ideally capacitor, upgrade. I'll leave it to you to figure this out because it will be pretty obvious, but it's better to find problems in the simulation.

You'll probably want a turbine and capacitor upgrade now. Even the starter equipment is rather underpowered with minimal power and heat generation.

MPI Railgun

The MPI Railgun Mk I is by far the best ordinary anti-ship weapon, and you can fit a railgun, MWG, and manipulator arm on the same K37 at the same time. This not only gives a mining ship serious combat force too, but it can also be used to crack large roids into small ones for quicker melting with the MWG.

Railguns are not expensive, and they are very cheap to repair, but they require a lot of power and will quickly drain the capacitor to the point of shutdown. So they need maximum turbine and capacitor upgrades at a minimum, and ideally an expensive (400,000 E$) NDAPS SMES to ensure continuous fire without worrying much about power.

A cheaper mass driver will still be pretty good though.

NDCI and MA-337 Autopilots

The NDCI Autopilot is useful for it's "laser sight" aiming and it prioritizes faster turns. It's not the best autopilot overall, but is best for combat situations and usable for mining.

The MA-337 is more fuel efficient and handles heavy ships and shifting cargo better.

Later Equipment Upgrades and More Crew

Before getting these you probably want to think about getting the first recommended ship upgrade, but I'll describe them here first because they can still be used effectively on the K37 you start with.

Thrusters, Engine, and Propellant Tank

Because these are more subject to personal preference than anything else, I have no obvious "no brainer" recommendations, except maybe stick with the default engine/thrusters for now and upgrade the propellant tank one notch to 50,000kg.

Generally speaking, if you have a "need for speed" and don't mind having to worry about fuel then go for power, otherwise go for efficiency. You can also go for somewhere in between like I usually do.

Engines also affect the amount of propellant needed to reduce transit time, which is how long it takes to get to the rings after you launch. In Tuning, set the "Xenon Drive Usage" to less than 100% and you will see how much fuel will be used for transit and how much time it will save.

Also in Tuning you can crank up the engine power, so consider trying that. And of course try to estimate how large of a fuel tank you need if you're using some "less efficient" thrusters, especially with xenon drive usage below 100%.

Even with stock equipment and nothing especially wasteful, the K37 could easily make use of a larger 50,000kg tank.

Obonto USV-D Microseismic Series Recon Drone

This will allow you to see what sort of minerals are in a roid before you possibly waste your time breaking it up. It's especially necessary to have when you need to obtain only one specific type of mineral ore, which will be covered in more detail later. Put the mouse cursor on a roid, or target it, to see mineral content estimates. It gets useful about the same time you want to tinker with the next item.....

Rusatom-Antonoff MPU

This is the least expensive MPU but also the slowest, least mineral-efficient, least power hungry, and the 2nd most efficient H2O propellant-extracting MPU. Getting one will let you pack some minerals into processed ore storage and sell it to Obonto Habitats, as well as replenish your propellant by melting the H2O ice in ore chunks. You can use the OMS Mechanic tab to turn it off at any time to keep it from wasting the raw ore in your hold if it has no refined mineral storage left.

Point Defense MWG

The Point Defense Microwave Generator or PDMG is a MWG on an auto-aiming and auto-firing turret. It's especially popular on larger ships in combination with MLF Haul Drones, but since it fits in low-stress hardpoints you can put them on smaller ships too. The auto-fire nature of PDMGs frees you up to do other things, like collect chunks, while they blast away at roids for you.

Backup/Additional Crew Members

Before too long, hire an extra astrogator, geologist, mechanic, and possibly pilot with the first two being most important. Just periodically check the crew applicants and see if there are any super cheap ones. You might even sometimes find one for between 500 and 1,000 E$/month. So try to pick them up in an opportunistically cheap manner.

Later when you have ships with a crew capacity of 6+ you can skill them up faster by having them fly with your experienced crew of the same profession. The mechanic won't need this though since they can skill up just sitting on the station; your backup mechanic will just start gaining experience as you repair stuff as usual without you having to take them along for a dive.

The reason for backup crew is that crew can get injured and be out of action for a while, go on leave for a few days, disappear for some reason, or whatever, and you don't want to be stuck with not being able to find a new astrogator, geologist, or mechanic on short notice.

Extra geologists and mechanics don't necessarily have to only be backups either. Multiple geologists on a ship will analyze ore chunks in parallel speeding up the process overall. Extra mechanics on the station will reduce ship repair time to 2/(1+number). So 9 cheap mechanics total will reduce repair time to 2/10ths = 1/5th of what it takes one. (But the per-person hotel and entertainment bills will start getting out of control with all those extra people, and you have to take everyone.)

Ship Upgrades 1: KX37 TNTRL (or KTA24 TNTRL)

After your second or third dive you're already ready for a ship upgrade even if you think you can't afford one yet. Unfortunately the upgrades that i would recommend may not be available in the dealership when you happen to look, so you might still need to wait for new ships to show up there, but this is why it's a good idea to grab one of these as soon as you can.

Affording Your Ship Upgrades

It might look like you can't buy a ship in the dealership, or if you do then you won't be able to outfit it the way you want, but this is probably not the case.

For your first upgrade I would recommend just trading in your ship, because the dealership always has base model K37 TNTRLs for sale, but make sure that your ship is repaired to whatever point the value of equipment increases significantly more from the repair than the repair costs.

However, for future upgrades you are probably not going to want to trade in your ship, and you might even want to keep your starter K37 for nostalga reasons, so I will describe how to collect ships that initially look like they cost over a million without actually having to tie up that much of your E$ cash.

Dealership Ships

The first thing to know is that ships in the dealership are mostly the cost of their equipment, not the hull, minus however much for how much they're damaged. if you buy one, mostly repair it, and strip it down to Empty or the cheapest option in every slot then most of them actually cost 250,000-350,000 E$ (except for some really expensive ones) to keep around. So you might need 1 or 2 million to buy some ship initially, but after it's repaired and stripped you get most of that back.

Strip Your Ship

So lets say you're going to keep your K37 (or any other ship) but want to sell off equipment to buy something else. Just make sure it's repaired as much as makes economic sense and select Empty, dummy plug, or the cheapest option for all slots. You will now have most of your equipment investment in the ship back as cash.

Buy New Ship

Hopefully this is enough to buy the new ship. Since you can usually repair most things and increase their value beyond the repair cost, buying ships with damaged stuff is usually a good idea. Even if some equipment is not worth repairing, at least you won't need to lay out any more cash before trading it in.

So repair the new ship up the point where it makes sense, then switch all the slots over to what you want. This will still cost some money so you still want extra money, but it won't be as much as you thought.

For all of the following options, notice the approximate total ship value (after equipment is added) in the upper right of the image. Your total net worth will only need to be a little more E$ than this to fund it if you are trading in your existing ship.

Note that you don't need the exact equipment on these. For example, you can often get by without the NDAPS if the turbine and capacitors are at max, the ER-42 autopilot can be replaced with the MA-337 (which is more fuel efficient anyway), and so on.

Upgrade Option 1: KX37 Combat Miner

This is the same as what you've already got but you're upgrading the hull to the extended bed version.

This will work for both mining, fighting, and recovering disabled pirates and derelicts, but the larger capacity will help you make more money by bringing in more ore. Recovering disabled ships that are about to explode will be a little trickier with this though due to the front thrusters. (Try to grab disabled ships using manual controls to avoid this problem.)

If you want to focus more on shooting up pirates and selling their ships, check out the next option.

Upgrade Option 2: KTA24 Combat Tug

This is almost the same as what you already have so won't cost much either, but your're going for more stubby and compact.

Less cargo space but lighter and has angled front thrusters to avoid heat-blasting the ship being towed. I would still recommend using manual controls when grabbing a disabled ship with a hot glowing reactor. This is because, when you grab another ship with the arm, your autopilot will go nuts trying to force an exact heading, speed, and orientation on your ship and it will probably still manage to torch the other ship in the process even with the angled thrusters.

This one should also be a little faster at maneuvering and thus a little better at fighting. It's ore capacity is very poor though, and it's worse for mining than the starter ship.

However, if you can consistently find or attract pirate trouble and get good at disabling and retrieving them, then you can bring in about as much or a little more E$ than you can mining right now. So, at least for the time being, you can probably forego mining in favor of capturing and selling ships if you want.

Here's one quick pirate-hunting tip and a tip for finding more "stuff" in general. You might find some places where pirates are more likely to be, but you can also deploy a B8 Claim Beacon in any place, even if there's nothing there, to attract more random "events" of different sorts. It's not called the "bait beacon" for nothing.

Premium Option: Vulture Prospector Combat Miner/Tug

There's no reason to skip getting one of the previous two options to hold out for this one because you can strip one of the previous two to fund this hull upgrade, and it uses almost the same equipment.

This all-in-one design is more expensive but better overall that either previous option. The front-facing thrusters are way in the back, it has a ice grinder on the front, and unlike the other Prospector hulls it can carry a manipulator arm. This is what I use for this do-it-all small ship role as soon as i can afford it, but use one of the previous two until i can.

The only real drawback to it is the fact that its especially ugly and contorted crew cabin makes the crew increasingly unhappy when they spend time on it, but it's not devastating and it's nothing the usual entertainment can't solve. The problem can be minimized by setting xenon drive usage to 0%, along with propellant tank and/or engine upgrades, so their time on the ship is greatly reduced.

Phase 1 Conclusion

Even after you get to the next ship upgrade phase (Cothon-217), keep one of these ships around and don't trade it in. You will always want a small fast combat/retrieval ship even if you don't mine with it.

But you can still temporarily strip it of equipment to fund the next ship purchase, just don't sell the hull because all of these are the "rare variant" types that are not always present in the dealership.

You may need to keep checking the dealership every few in-game days until you see one for sale.

After you can afford the cost of the KX37 or KTA24 examples shown above, you only need another million or so to start getting truly heavy duty with the mining. With mining at larger capacity than you started with, and recovering a derelict/disabled ship or two, this won't take long.

Ship Upgrades 2: Cothon-217 "Bender"

Once you can afford to outfit this ship, you won't have much trouble bringing in the E$. So this setup is really a much bigger income boost for you than the much more expensive ship in Phase 3.

The Cothon-217 "Bender" is another variant that isn't always in the dealership, and stripped it only costs like 250k or 300k or something, so I would strongly suggest snatching this thing up in the dealership as soon as you see one and can scrounge together the cash to do so, even if you're not ready to fully outfit it yet. It's not super rare, but if you get unlucky enough it could take a while for one to show up if you passed up your chance to buy earlier.

This thing is a piece of junk. Just like the basic version, this one only has one main engine and 4 RCS thrusters. It's a big beer can with only a tiny converted lifepod for crew. It also gets damaged easily. Like a rusty old semi truck, nobody would ever use this, especially in the hazardous rings, if it weren't for the cargo capacity.

So why is this one special? The killer feature of this ship is the huge variable processed mineral storage. Nothing has a processed mineral storage this big that is also variable and can all be used for a single mineral. That's what makes this ugly old junk heap so valuable for the low low price of 2,700,000 E$ or so when fully equipped. It also happens to be immune to microwaves.

Essential Equipment

MLF Haul Drones: This has no hardpoint for an arm and it needs to suck up the chunks fast, so these drone plants are critical. You might be able to sort of get away with only one drone module for a while, but it's going to be slow and annoying. So I would wait until you can afford both. Leave the Tuning settings for the drones at default because that seems to work well enough.
Nakamura MPU: Ideally you want the Mitsudaya-Starbus MSU, but the Naka MPU will work and it extracts a good bit of remass as well. The Nakamura MPU is a bare minimum because this whole ship revolves around processed mineral storage, and the R-A MPU is just too slow and inefficient in this case.
Nanodrone Storage: You will want at least 10,000kg or it will be very difficult to fill the processed storage.
Power/Thermal: You will need the max upgraded capacitor and turbine, and 20x fuel rods. Later you can get a NDAPS and downgrade the capacitor, and that will be better, but keep the military turbine even with the NDAPS. The MPU and everything are very power hungry. It can work without the NDAPS but get that later when you can, especially when you add the super power hungry Mitsudaya MSU.
Obonto USV-D, Microseismic: The main strategy with this is to hunt a specific mineral, and that means this is essential.

Changable Equipment and Tuning Settings

CL-150 Mining Lasers: Crank the power all the way up on these in Tuning because they're cheap to repair anyway. i like these because they demolish roids quickly, can be controlled, and are at least discouraging to attackers even if they won't destroy a ship very easily. But try any other ideas you think of. Here are a few alternatives I can think of:
- With more E$, uipgrade these to CL-200APs and crank both the power and pulse frequenty to the max. These are expensive to buy and repair but more useful for self defense.
- Use one CL-200AP (or even a CL600P) and a railgun for defense. Turn off railgun when not needed.
- One MWG or PDMG and a railgun for defense. I find just one MWG/PDMG to be a bit too slow though.
- Two MWGs or PDMGs: could work for mining, but not very good for defense.
Thruster/Engine/Tank: I tried to provide some reasonable suggestions for these but as usual you can try whatever you want here. I would replace the NAGHETs as soon as their replacement cost reaches their repair cost. Also crank up the power on the thrusters and engines in Tuning but it doesn't have to be all the way. The 80,000kg tank seems to be a minimum. See RCS and Main Propulsion for stats.
ER-42 Autopilot and High-Res LIDAR: I put ER-42 on here, but you can actually use the MA-337 just fine. It should be more fuel efficient too, and doesn't require hi res lidar. The ER-42 is still good for heavy ships with shifting center of mass and this ship also has a crappy RCS situation that it might be better at compensating for. The high-res lidar is only needed by the ER-42. (If for some reason you don't see the ER-42, extensively question an annoyingly common NPC and they will "set you up". But the MA-337 should work fine.)
Main upgrades to consider once you bring home the jackpot: NDAPS, Mitsudaya-Starbus MSU, CL-200AP lasers with power and frequency cranked all the way up, harvester (20,000kg) nanodrone storage. Also a Nakamura Dynamics Yama-SSR12 reactor core weighs half as much as 20x fuel rods, and operates cooler, even if you don't need the extra thermal output for anything, but that one isn't too important and it's expensive.

Crew

Another disadvantage of this ship hull is that it only has space for three crew, so you can't bring all four professions with you. Just leave out the pilot and bring the others since they are much more essential.

Ship Upgrades 2: Cothon-217 Mining/Business Strategy

There are two main mining/profit strategies for using this ship:

Mine a specific mineral for an Obonto station offering more than 6,500 E$/ton for it.
Mine only W(+Be) or W+V(+Be) (with Be being opportunistic-only) and just sell at the station.

Obonto Habitat Strategy

By the time you get this ship together, you have probably found at least one if not 3-4 Obonto Habitats that offer to buy minerals at premium prices. (if you haven't for some reason, just wait until you do, skip this strategy for now, and move on to the second strategy of focusing on W or V+W.) I once managed to make 3,950,000 E$ gross profit in one dive doing this because an Obonto was offering a ridiculously high price for V, so it's worth a try just in case the dice land on a high number at one station one day.

Find the Minimum Premium Price

First check the price of W at Enceladus and lets say it's 6,500 E$. if so the Obonto needs to be offering more than that for V, Pt, or Pd to make mining that worthwhile, or maybe around the same amount if it's easy to find. Otherwise it will be easier to go after W if you have figured out how to find it.

Check the Obontos

Astrogate to each Obonto station to see if any are paying enough for some mineral. They will never pay much for Fe, and they never buy W or Be, so it's going to have to be Pt, Pd,. or V with V being most likely to be something ridiculously high like 10,000+. But anything they will pay more per 1,000kg than W at the station will be worth trying.

Geologist Filters

Before anything else, set your Geologist tab up like this. The rest of this will assume you are going after V as the target element, but if not then substitute the actual target in place of V. The minimum price is to avoid wasting drones on low value chunks, and turning off "unmarked" keeps the drones from being wasted going after chunks that the geologist hasn't identified yet. I usually set one a little higher than the other so that the marginal chunks essentially end up with a lower priority. You can also set this to 1,000 and 2,000, but i would recommend 1,000 as a minimum so that the drones don't waste time trying to pull in that 364 E$ chunk while a 10,000 E$ chunk drifts out of their range.

Finding the Mineral

I'll describe some better hints for finding things in the next subsection, but for now I'll describe something simple that doesn't require leaving the area around whatever station is offering the high price using V as the example mineral.

Check the area immediately around the station for V using the microseismic. Mine whatever you see there, if anything. The rest will assume this wasn't sufficient or wasn't present.
Start traveling any direction, lets say 0 degrees, from the habitat until you're 3km from the habitat. Check all the roids on the way for V. Lets say you see no trace of it in any of them and are now 3km away.
Start circling the Obonto at a radius of 3km (or 2-3km) checking all the roids you see for V.
As soon as you see a roid with even a tiny bit of V, check all the roids in all directions around that to see which direction the V concentration is increasing.
If it seems to be getting higher in some direction from that roid, keep going in that direction following the trail of increasing V concentration.
If this leads to a dead end then go back to 3km from the station and continue circling it where you left off, but it it leads to a pile of V then mine until the processed mineral storage is full.
Immediately turn off the MPU when the processed storage is full but keep filling up the cargo hold with chunks until it's full of V chunks.
Go the station and sell, then turn the MPU back on to process the rest of the chunks and sell again.
If it seems worth it to continue, you still have drones and fuel, and it seems like there's still V around then go back out and repeat until out of fuel/drones.This is kind of crude but it usually works if the price is high enough and you don't want to risk them changing their minds while you're trying to fast travel elsewhere for better mining.

The "Just Mine W" Strategy

Finding High Mineral Concentrations in General

I don't want to be too specific here, because I said no spoilers, so I'll just provide some tips so you can figure it out. After 100+ hours I never really did because I didn't spend enough time trying to investigate the gravimetric sensor drone or looking around enough studying the iceroid distribution.

Gravimetrics

The Runasemi Gravimetric USV looks rather obscure and useless at first because it just puts these contour lines on the lidar display that don't seem to mean anything in most places. And in most places they don't mean anything, but as it turns out they do mean something if you're in the right place.

Visuals

First, look at the visual feed and the astrogation map of the rings and look for some spots where it looks like the roids might be visually much denser than their surroundings. Get there somehow (travel from nearby waypoint or just pay launch fees to dive there directly) with a reasonably fast ship outfitted with the gravimetric recon sensor drone and ideally carrying a B8 Claim Beacon to make it easier to get back to a specific place if desired.

Prospecting

Now travel around the area that looks interesting on the visfeed and check out the "contour" lines on the lidar. Does there seem to be a "hill" of red-fringed lines to climb around there? It probably doesn't match the visfeed exactly but there probably is something like this if you're in the right sort of spot on the map.

"Climb" to the "top" of the "hill" and look around. Check out areas on the "hilltop" that look both full of dots and that seem to have too few dots for a hilltop and go check out the differences by shooting up some roids to see what they contain, or deploy the claim beacon and come back later with a mining ship with a microseismic to get a more detailed look at specific roids.

Doing this a while you'll probably find some spots with more minerals than usual. If some sort of roughneck blues song starts playing that's usually a good sign but isn't absolutely required. So look for all factors to combine: dense-looking on visual feed/map, bright red-fringed hilltop/ridge in gravimetric, music sounds like a RAM 1500 luxury pickup truck commercial, and microseismic and/or geologist sees good stuff.

Being Picky

The idea here is to find a dense mineral concentration like this and then pick out either just the W(+Be) or V+W(+Be) depending on how much W you find and how long you want to look around. 108,000kg is going to be a lot of E$ especially if you also fill up the hold with some high E$ chunks (which don't have to be W, just any chunk worth more than 6,000 or whatever minimum you want to set).

This should bring back around 1M E$ worth each time, and often more, but the Obonto offers can still be worth trying since they sometimes offer ridiculous amount of E$ for stuff and you can putter back and forth between some roids and the station to repeatedly sell without a long transit.

Ring Depth

One question to investigate is whether depth into the ring results in better roids, both in general and in these good spots.

Example Result

This is probably about the best you can possibly do if you find a really good spot with W and some Be (the Be will increase the collection time though). More typically it will be more like 1M.

Ship Upgrades 2.5 (Optional): Obonto OCP-209

Maximizing Income Isn't Everything

This one I left out of the roadmap to maximizing income because it's not really the most important money maker compared to the others, but it is kind of special and does come in handy for some stuff that you might have encountered on your own by now. It also isn't really that expensive and is actually cheaper than a Prospector hull. So just skip this for now if it doesn't seem interesting, or maybe just "collect" the stripped down ship when you see it in the dealership. But eventually you'll want to use it for something. The Obonto OCP-209 is a really weird but very useful ship. Some people hate it and some people love it so much they just use it for everything, maximizing profit be damned.

Here are some of it's main advantages:

With a hull cost of 217,200 E$, the equipment-stripped version costing 390,000 E$, and a minimal usable version costing just under 1M E$, it's not that expensive to collect the hull or even use the ship. In fact you could afford it before the Cothon-217, though it's not quite profitable enough for me to want to buy it before the Cothon-217.
It holds 8 crew in a morale-maintaining comfortable habitat which means that it's great for training crew and exposing a large number of crew to whatever events are going on out there.
It has a very large cargo bay with the largest bay door available. It can swallow up small to medium sized roids and plenty of random objects you might find out there that you want to bring back to sell. It's better at this than any other ship.
The cargo bay door is also good at crushing roids.
It's the only ship with two high-stress hardpoints, but it still has two forward pointed low stress hardpoints for normal weapons and such.
Though it's larger than the Prospector, and almost looks as big as a Titan, it's maneuverable enough for its size that it's good for combat if equipped properly. The high-stress hardpoints can also mount not just one, but two, exotic heavy weapons (which is normally overkill).
With two manipulator arms, it's possible to tow back two derelict ships at one time. (People usually don't bother though because this is difficult to manage.)
Like the Titan K225, it can equip the largest propellant, nanodrone, and ammo stores if needed, but it's smaller than the Titan.
It even has a decent-sized variable processed mineral storage, though the store is half the size of the Cothon-217.
With the Rosatom-Antonoff MPU and the ability to chomp down whole iceroids, it's good at extracting its own propellant from roids.But it has some limitations that keep most people from wanting to use it for everything:

It's not very good at mineral processing because every MPU besides the R-A MPU is mounted sideways in the bay. This makes them very tricky to get any chunks to go into. This limits the usefulness of the refined mineral storage.
The side mounting of the bay door and high stress hardpoints is tricky to learn to use, especially with no manipulator arms.
The huge cargo bay door also means that it's has more difficulty keeping its cargo from flying out than any other ship.
The huge bay opening is also harder to use with only one manipulator arm.
While the RCS thruster layout is good and the ship can rotate around its cargo to make rotation easier, it can only mount one main engine which limits its main thrust.

Important OCP Tips

Number one advice: Go into Tuning and disable the option "Autopilot assist for variable geometry ships"! This is the function that causes the ship to rotate every time you open the cargo bay door so that the forward direction changes to what is normally sideways. While this sounds good in theory, it has a strong tendency to throw stuff out of the cargo hold, and you won't be able to open the door without spinning the ship. It's easier to learn to fly sideways when you want to rather than use this option, and you can open the cargo bay door without being force to spin 90 degrees.
Pulling in entire small or medium iceroids isn't unreasonable, but the manipulator arms tend to get damaged this way. So expect those to need more repair than usual if you use this mining tactic.
Ideally any roids that aren't broken should get smashed up in the cargo bay by spinning around and accelerating. Otherwise you'll be bringing back lots of H2O mass and fewer chunks will fit in the cargo.
Just pulling in random average mixed mineral roids and refining them to fill up processed mineral storage, then filling the hold up with raw ore, a typical full load haul is worth around 500,000 E$.
If you reduce the xenon transit drive usage, and want to return to the station in less than 3-4 days with a full load, the below examples will need either a larger propellant tank or more efficient engines (even if you refill the tank by refining roids).
I wouldn't try to fly this into a moonlet cave of any sort. If you want to try then don't blame me for the repair bill. Those thruster pylons are kind of delicate. (Of course some people still do it anyway.)

Example OCP-209 Setups

Here are two example builds for this ship: one "budget" version and another "premium" version that's easier to deal with. (Again, you need larger propellant tanks than this if you want to minimize transit time.)

Minimal "Budget" OCP

This is about the least expensive that the ship and equipment can be while still being usable. With lower power RCS thrusters, it is very dependent on the main drive to do anything but rotate around. You can still make some different choices of equipment and keep it under 1M.

Fully Loaded "Premium" OCP

Decent engine power, a MPU, and a railgun, plus the power upgrades, will end up costing closer to 3M E$. It can have less or more expensive equipment, but this is a typical cost for a close to maximally capable version. I didn't put too much effort into these examples though. They're just here to give you an idea of how much money it takes to equip one.

Testing the OCP as Step 2 instead of Step 2.5

Here's where I decided to try going for an OCP as quickly as possible. My conclusion was that this ides is not too bad for experienced players, but an unnecessary pain for anyone completely new to the game.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3361731615

Ship Upgrades 3: Antonoff-Titan K225

Before you get to this point you probably should just buy a Antonoff-Titan K225 (which is not rare; one is always at the dealership) and try using it normally, then try this wacky monster of a build for comparison.

(I would also recommend trying out every ship at some point, because I've found at least a neiche use for almost all of them, but this particular beast might help you "MaKe MoNeY FaSt !!!" when you need some E$.)

The Problem

Many, perhaps most, people obsess about how much they bring back in one dive. I'm more interested in how much I can get per minute of my playtime. And sometimes I only have maybe 20min to play.

The Solution: The "Broadsides" PDMG Beast Titan

Equipment

The only requirement is that all 4 PDMGs need to be on the same side, and there needs to be enough power to power everything. Other than that you can reduce the cost by using cheaper equipment.

Tuning

This is really the only important part. If hostile ships show up then they will tend to have some serious problems caused by these PDMGs, even with these settings, but you can replace a haul drone module with a railgun if you want to be sure you can defend yourself from anything.

Crew

The Titan has a huge crew capacity of 12. You only need one each of the others, but multiple geologists will help make sense of the chunk chaos this beast can unleash. So put up to 9 geologists in this thing, as cheaply as possible, and let them go to work. They will probably gain two experience levels each in one dive if they start with no experience. All aboard the geology bus!

Actually, 9 geologists is a bit excessive, but this is a good opportunity to bring along some trainees for all professions except maybe mechanic (since they can learn on the station).

Strategy

The strategy is simple here: just go out somewhere good (or even mediocre), broadside demolish all roids instantly, and fill the cargo bay with the highest priced raw ore chunks from each roid as quickly as possible without worrying about MPUs or containers or any of that stuff.

The whole idea is to not have to worry about a specific element and just demolish so many roids so fast that the ship gets filled quickly with 1M E$ worth just by picking out the best chunks.

This won't even use up all 20,000kg of drone parts. If being careful enough 10,000kg would work but I use more than that so i can be sloppy, use a lower minimum value, and get done faster.

Specific engines are of course not needed and you can use an 80,000kg fuel tank, i just used the larger one so I could set xenon drive usage to 0% and get 12h transit time with this configuration.

I usually use this for the filters for what the drones should bring in:

Setting minimum value to 7,000 almost guarantees at least 1M E$ worth even if you don't find lots of W and V roids. Finding lots of W and V can bring in 1.5M E$.

Some Quick Test Results

Even if most of the ore is Pt, i still ended up with 1M E$ worth.

I didn't keep track of the time on this run, but on a recording I made it was exactly 15 minutes from dive screen to results screen and > 1M E$.

Of course, you can do better if you do this in a better location.

Example Game

In case anyone is interested, I tested out the strategies in this guide by attempting to follow them myself. Here are the results for anyone who is interested: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3341274575

I avoided getting detoured by story stuff for this and left out spoiler type stuff here too.

Conclusion

I've only mentioned a fraction of stuff in the game because this isn't intended to be a complete guide to everything. There is still a ton of stuff to do and try, but this should be a lot easier now with some ideas on how to find things beyond the ring edge, make money, and collect ship hulls more cheaply.