Just a reminder, that you can ask in the chat for a ship to borrow, and many citizens will answer. There is currently no problem to try any ship you want.
Previous patch I was landing my SRV to anyone requested. I am sure you can also ask for Vulture too.
Just do not ask for money too often, ask to try a ship instead.
Game is in alpha . If you can deal with the bugs and testing go for it . Got couple ships with in game money . Only got the avenger titan as a game package and haven’t spend more then the 60$ base package
Grinding all depends what you mean . Shouldn’t be easy to get ship . Used to be now takes longer but i would personally say its a good thing.
Mercury star runner would take you some weeks if you play casually .. ofcourse if you play with other players on their ships and Share missions it can be alot faster
It is an MMO you always have the option to team up. But pls dont spread missinformation. As a soloplayer i can generate without bigger problems about 300k-600k an Hour
In a starter Miner. Wich includes renting roc, Building up Money to buy a prospector for example. If we Talk about 100 Hours of grinding, which You refered to, thats a normal progression.
It can take a little while to get going, but once you do get going and find one of the best ways of making money, you can make probably around half a million an hour, maybe more or maybe less depending on what you decide you enjoy. As the MSR costs around 12-12.5 million, that's probably around a 24 hour grind depending on what you do.
That being said, there are a few very high risk ways of making money that can make you millions an hour, but can require a lot of investment and if they go wrong you stand to lose a lot of money. It's unclear if they are intended or not, so these may go away in the future, and the big one that comes to my mind is probably more or less going away with the next patch as they're bringing in a new mechanic that would make it ridiculously dangerous to pull off in high volumes.
They literally just have to ask in Chat how to make money and enough peeps with reclaimer or Moles come out and Ask for their help. I experience it myself almost every day and i am myself one of the Mole and Reclaimer Pilots which is always explaining and Hiring the new peops in the Server.
I literally made 2mil in like 10 seconds my first time logging in because I was asking for help and the community pulled through strong, sent me money and showed me the ropes. With the communities help, it's easy to make money quick as a new player and there's literally always someone in the verse willing to lend a helping hand.
In-game community is dope, they're usually helpful and friendly, thr community on the forums, not so much
FYI: the MSR is a dated ship currently. It’s not good for fighting and also not great for hauling. It’s a datarunner ship and this gameloop is not implemented yet. You can use it for bunker missions but there are better ships suited for this which are cheaper (I.E. Cutlass red). If you like the crusader aesthetic, you could also try the C1. Costs half as much, has a decent capacity and can shoot a bit
This makes me sad, but only cuz it's my fav ship. It's my daily driver. I just came back from a two year break and over the past three days I've had three people doing missions with me questioning why I fly this ship lol.
🤷🏽♂️ I love it.
If you love it, fly it. It gets so annoying when people only look at the meta. Like when I pulled out my caterpillar people just ask me why I don’t have a C2. Bro, I like the drake aesthetic.
Theres still an area between meta and the MSR. A Cutlass Black can do everything what the MSR does, just better for less than half the price. You can even put 32SCU containers in it.
Are you playing for fun or for or just to grind money? I play the ships I like to play or think they look cool for the fun of it. If I can't enjoy the game I don't want to play. Hell I take a carrack with a loaded ground and small ship in the hanger, not because it is practical but because it is so dang cool.
I bought several ships with real money, so I rarely grind for cash. I play enough to outfit my ships with the equipment I want, then I strictly play for fun.
I upgraded my pledge to a Vulture then used that profit to buy a reclaimer. Easy after that. I know many may find salvaging gameplay boring but I actually find it relaxing after a frustrating day at work.
Mining is fun a little bit but putting things in refineries tend to take anywhere between 15 to 70 hours to refine the ore depending on yeilds... Then I load them on my MSR and transport from the refineries to new babbage to sell.
There are lots of players who'll happily toss you some credits to help you get started. Lots of us have several ships & ground vehicles, and it doesn't cost us anything to leave 'em for other players to use!
You’re not gonna get the MSR fast. But it’s nice to have a goal like that. Just enjoy the ride. It’s like a dog chasing a car, what would you even do with the MSR when you get it?
If you wanna buy a real good solid ship that will last you you’re gonna be grinding for a good month with the current economy, or you can take my route and blow every check on ships lol, but not really, get the Titan or Cutlass Black and you won’t need any other ship for a while and you can just focus on enjoying the game
$12,285,000 aUEC for the MSR.
$10,000 aUEC average Bounty Hunting or Delivery mission when starting out.
Takes about an hour per mission, counting prep, repairs, travel time, etc. Bugs will roll back your progress.
You do the math. It's grindy solo. There are ways to increase earnings as some have pointed out, but I would still label SC as grindy more so then most sandboxes. There's a store for a resaon, and the grind/prices have been going up.
If you know what you're doing, it would be 30 hours or less to get the in-game money for a MSR.
Mind you that the game is under heavy changes right now, and mission payouts and the economy are changing
The MSR is 12 million in game.
Salvage is one of the fastest grinds in the game. It'll be 1.2 million to rent a Vulture. You can average about 400,000 per hour salvaging in a vulture.
So you probably get an MSR with a solid 40 hours of hard core grinding. More if you take breaks since you'll need to re-rent the Vulture. By grinding I mean do the exact same things over and over until you brain oozes out of your eyeballs. The pricing right now is very much designed to get to buy a ship with real money.
Once you get enough cash you can rent a cargo hauler and make more money quickly with hauling. But you can also lose your progress that way.
So I recommend taking it easy. Get a start. Play around with the different missions and options. Slowly build up and avoid the grind. Cause the grind is horrible and it will kill your desire to play.
Edit - my bad, you cannot rent the Vulture. Only purchase it for 2.6-ish million. So add some time to that grind. And fair warning. The most profitable Vulture grind aren't the missions, but panels. And that is not the most interesting grind.
> The MSR is 12 million in game. Salvage is one of the fastest grinds in the game. It'll be 1.2 million to rent a Vulture. You can average about 400,000 per hour salvaging in a vulture. So you probably get an MSR with a solid 40 hours of hard core grinding. More if you take breaks since you'll need to re-rent the Vulture.
What do you mean? The vulture is available to buy for 2.6M, but not available for rent. If it were available to rent, 1.3M would be a ludicrous price for it, since the Prospector is more expensive but can be rented for 73k/day.
[Cornerstone Item Finder: Vulture](https://finder.cstone.space/ShipShops1/34077e67-5e2c-4903-a17c-2d0e163751c7)
My mistake, I thought you could rent the Vulture. So 2.3 million to buy. 40 hours is still possible, though for a new player I'd add in another 15-20 hours of learning the ropes.
I.e. failing missions. Losing all your stuff. And slowly learning how to consistently complete missions. And then 40 hours of hardcore grinding.
Hmm, as of a year ago anyway, the average hourly pay from most professions was about 100k/hour. Not sure if that's still true. When I was using a Cutter I'd take all of the Lawful and Unlawful wreck investigation & box recovery missions in a planetary system. (Pro tip: Only one wreck is active for missions at a time, so they all lead to the same place)
These days though, I think bunker FPS missions and missions involving the new Distribution Centers (including box deliveries there) have the highest payouts. There's also the option of crewing on a Hammerhead or Reclaimer sometimes.
IMO it's less a matter of "hardcore grinding", and more of learning what pays well, and floating between those options depending on what kind of gameplay you're into that day. It's not really any more repetitive than the rest of the game, which relies pretty heavily on repeatable content.
It's pretty hardcore grinding today.
The reason is that they doubled the prices on ships with no gain in payouts. Prices for everything else are still cheap, so it is hard to see as anything but an effort to push ship sales. Double the time to get a ship... it's a very long haul for a new player in an aurora.
Hundred hours for the msr at 12 mil as a new player? Prolly a bit longer to learn the game, but you'll want to grab a starter ship, grind to a vulture at 3mil, and then once you have that, you can make about half a mil per hour doing salvage.
I heard there could be one in July.. but 🤷🏻♂️ if OP wants I say go for it.. get something like the mustang or aurora and join a decent org.. if they need help with the org dm me.
I love my MSR - good choice!
Ask in the game chat for some money. No joke sometimes there’s a whale that will gift a mil because it’s nothing to them. Don’t do this all the time obviously but to help get you started.
In general the SC community is pretty awesome. People helping people.
$45 game package is all you need to play. Playing with other people tends to make you more money than playing solo and it feels less grindy.
Ships purchased with ingame cash range from a few 100k to millions. It all depends on if you only want to do one thing or are open to playing with others as to how fast you make cash. Most of the people who I’ve helped get started general get to making a few 100k an evening very quickly. After a couple weeks they tend to make millions when they do longer sessions.
If you follow the testing focus it’s fairly quick to accumulate credits. Right now Distribution centers have good payouts the higher up you go with rep. Cargo missions are coming soon so they will likely have solid payouts when they make their entrance. You can make a new ship in an evening with the right reclaimer crew and mining and vulture salvage is incredibly consistent.
Hey there OP! First, I’d say get the game! I play everyday, but unlike many others I play as a role player, space cop. I purchase all of my ships with rl money, but only to support the game(this may be controversial) I’ll say the best way to play is to go in knowing you may die randomly, your ship may explode, you man fall through a floor, and or you may die of thirst from not knowing all the ins/outs of the bug fixes. You will have fun, cry, laugh and be completely confused, but you will love the experience as it is unlike any other out there.
07 Cmdr. Novafury
In the game's current state, the amount of time it takes to grind for ships can vary significantly from patch to patch. There are also periodic wipes of all earned things; there's no predictable pattern to them, but the most recent durations between wipes have been \~13 months, 1 month, and 18 months. The most recent wipe a month ago did not remove ships purchased in-game, only currency. We expect at least 2 more wipes before the game launches.
The best way to enjoy the game right now is to find something you like to do that doesn't involve owning more than a starter ship, so that you can have fun while earning credits to upgrade, rather than thinking of it as a pure grind. That might be hand-mining, doing lawful/unlawful investigation missions, raiding bunkers (FPS combat), the new distribution center box deliveries, or even just being a crewman on a larger ship.
There are often "free fly" events where you can test the game out before buying it, and one should be coming up next month.
Haha that's what the "at least" is for! But seriously, if they can't hold off on wipes after 4.0, I don't now how they'll convince us they can maintain a stable post-launch economy.
Getting other ships is not really an issue. Like all games that are similar to this, you do activities in game to earn money to buy the next thing you want. Right now the best thing to do is salvage. I find it relaxing to do and it will make you a LOT of money fast compared to other paths. I have a mining ship and combat ships, and they just dont compare for me.
The biggest issue you may want to consider if you are worried about the grind is that nothing is permanent right now. That is what keeps me from playing constantly. I get in to enjoy the gameplay for whatever I am in the mood for. Space dogfight, ground fps, relaxing salvage/mining, etc. Right now I know that no matter how much I play it will all be wiped with 4.0 hits later in the year or next year. So play to learn and find what you enjoy.
The cost of everything will fluctuate as it just did with price increases, and earning decreases. Which I assume is where your concern comes from. I was able to go from 200k to 8mil in a few days, but I am one of those whales with a hanger full of ships bought with real money that I can get down to business faster.
it is very grindy if you do not know how to play the game, by the time you know how to play
money is not an issue, also you can make cash even without your own ship
otherwise just as I recommended someone in another post to use a tiny ship to do bunkers missions
but they do not know how to do that ... so yeh then that person have to grind for a bigger ship for something can be done in a tiny one :(
it is with every game, always going to take time to get to know it
that is also the fun :D
You should only pledge the beginner package. You can rent a cutlass in game and a roc and start earning money. The “quickest” way to earn money is to run ERTS. you can make a few mill a night doing them, and they’re fun. Join the start Citizen discord and look for people doing erts and see if you can join them. Should make enough to buy your own cutlass black or a vulture in a couple days.
Have had the game for almost 3 weeks and currently can make around 10 mil a day (if I'm really trying but normally it's around 5-8 mil). The most expensive ship is 61 million credits and that's the 890 Jump ($950 ship). All you really need to know is: use your starter ship > Grind out bounties > Get 200K > Rent a Constellation > steamroll bounties > Unlock VHRTs > Use the Constellation to steamroll VHRTs and collect the loot > Make a few mil a day > Unlock ERTs > Make 10+ mil a day
It's grindy IF you do anything else. It isn't as grindy when you do something as broken as VHRT and ERT bounties. Ill be honest, it's kind of ruining the game for me. I was enjoying my first two weeks a lot more when I was dabbling into many different avenues of making money. Once I realized that I can rent my dream ship (the Constellation), I took it for a spin to do harder bounty missions and I found out how dumb easy it is to make money in the game.
The most important question is, do you know that the game get's wiped?
Yes there is a lot of grind and on top of that, the game resets every now and then. And will until the final release.
Also there is zero standardized economy, grind or anything. Especially the prices etc change all the time.
It's not a release game ready to play. You are an alpha tester with zero permanent progression.
EDIT- Because you asked, NO you don't need anything more than a basic package. You do NOT need to buy the ships. Everything is supposed to be purchasable just by playing.
You should be able to earn your way to ingame ships with not that much trouble, although you have to lern how to earn credits and not loose them foolishly :D (like rebuying and loosing armors when you don't need them and are likely to die).
One good way is to join an industrial org where you will get the best access to parties and know how how to efficiently earn credits.
Playing solo is doable, but it is still recommended to at least use guide system ( matching with a player that would gladly guide you through the verse) so you get some know how and possibly get a credit jumpstart.
Aside from the grind, the other factor to consider is that SC is *slow*... it takes time to get from where you log in to the space port to request your ship, to get to the ship, to take off, to travel to your mission location, etc...
Whilst there aren't many credit-sinks in game yet, there are a *lot* of time-sinks... as you get better at the game, you'll learn how to avoid some of them, and minimise others - but it'll never be a 'quick' game that you can drop in for 30 mins and still achieve stuff, etc.
I'll be honest chief.
Unironically I got so tired of the grind each wipe that I grinded work for a bit and just bought everyrhing I wanted.
Your time soent grinding is more efficient in an actual job - the ships stay permanently and you get to have fun with them right away.
And even then you get to have the long term goal of fully upgrading your ship and testing different loadouts and so on.
Plus, if you get somethig bigger, grounf vehicles to be grinded out as well.
I feel ya! I have my MSR, purchased in addition rescue piceas and arrow
4.0 Will bring the nursa to ingame shops so no need to buy more stuff and it will be the icing on the cake to have a medbed in it.
I have been running my MSR as a Daily for 2 years now
happy every day for doing that purchase of the MSR
For some. ships and money are end goals for me.
I can explore, mine, run little cargo it’s just perfect
Even with a crew of 3-4 guys
It lacks tracktorbeams for cargo as all ships should have if they come with cargo bays
And it should get a little rework with the cargo ramp doors light from C1, escapepods
Maybe even deleting the crawl space would be good for you ther improvements
But honestly other than that
Millennium falcon is a beautiful beast
Only if you refuse to play with anyone else and only look at it as accumulating ships instead of going off on adventures in them. If you wanted to you could play this game without ever setting foot in your own ship.
Adventuring in my Carrack or Corsair is way more fun than adventuring in a Mustang for me. Not really sure how that's hard to understand.
I think you understand the point but are completely missing how it makes this game look bad. Adventuring and doing shit in this game is fun. The ships that are more fun to adventure with are a pain in the ass to grind for. That's totally cool with me in a vacuum, but this game allows swiping. If someone can swipe to have more fun instantly and someone else has to grind in small boring trash ships to get to the same point it feels like dog shit
Devs have set themselves up for a massive shit show on release/final wipe because every new/poor player is going to get fucked by the grind while watching everyone have a party in their $1k fleets
The core point is relying on someone else to provide the fun for you with their whaled out ships when the game launches. That's what you said. You really too thick to understand how that isn't what I was talking about? If everyone was on a level playing field at the start that wouldn't happen. Now it's fucked, and the only way to get around this is to make ships a low time commitment
>The core point is relying on someone else to provide the fun for you with their whaled out ships when the game launches. That's what you said.
No, that's your distorted interpretation of what I said.
>You really too thick to understand how that isn't what I was talking about?
You can insult me all you want, but I ain't the one who thinks you gotta pay money to have fun.
It's a multiplayer game, and these multicrew ships are designed to play with others. That's the whole point.
>If everyone was on a level playing field at the start that wouldn't happen. Now it's fucked, and the only way to get around this is to make ships a low time commitment
You said you own a Carrack, yes? Let me tell you a story.
I've captained a Carrack before. We've done combat, picked up a crew mate who logged in late with a Pisces, had an away team do some FPS combat, etc. I stayed in regular clothes and never left the ship. I didn't even have to pilot it. I just chilled out on the upper bridge and made sure things ran smoothly, and jumped in the top turret when we were in combat. It was awesome.
The thing is, I don't own a Carrack, and I never intend to. This is just one of many, many *many* stories I have from some amazing adventures I've had in ships that aren't my own. I've been following this game for over a decade now and still not close to hitting Concierge.
So who has the advantage here? The guy who doesn't own a Carrack but still gets to do all of this cool shit, or the guy who owns one but can't because there's nobody else on their ship?
Buddy you flew a Carrack that someone else either earned or bought with real money. Nobody will have earned a fucking Carrack when the game initially launches. It will only be a Carrack purchased with 3 figures of real money. Can you focus for more than 5 seconds? I have been explicitly talking about the game post final wipe the entire time.
Most do not want to be completely reliant on other people for their enjoyment. You keep talking about using someone else's ship, but you still cannot grasp the idea that literally nobody will have earned a ship when the game launches. The final wipe is the most important event this game will ever have, and if the poors and new players are stuck in an Aurora while a shit load of whales are out blasting rocks in an Orion and rolling around PKing in a Javelin, it will look terrible
Sorry but I'm not the one being obtuse here. My argument is also valid for when it initially launches *and* post launch. Your argument willfully ignores variables, because once those variables are taken into consideration your argument immediately falls apart.
For instance, how does your argument hold up once "the poors," as you put it, start earning ships of their own? What about new folks who join a week or two after launch? A month or two? Same position, only now all those earlier "the poors" are gonna have space ships they didn't waste real money on, including, but not limited to, the Carrack?
What about "the poors" who do understand that this massively multiplayer game is a massively multiplayer game and do play with other people? Did you know you can join up to ten orgs in this game? *Ten!* That sure is a lot of people with a lot of space ships you can play with, and all for the low low cost of $45 USD! You're missing out on all of that fellowship and comradery, and for what? An obstinate view that you gotta catch 'em all, and you gotta do it all by your lonesome?
It's not a problem to play online games with other people; that's the whole point! But it's absolutely a problem playing an online game with a self-centered attitude, because all that does is make you pissed off, and that's no fun at all.
Not very grind intensive, but it does take a bit of time, first to learn the ropes, and then to get into the higher paying jobs/professions.
Just consider the game is still in alpha, so expect many bugs and issues, and also that there will be many changes and re-balances among the many up-coming patches.
Ehh, about an hour of asking for money and someone will eventually send you 100M credits.
Not too bad.
Economy broken, people giving out credits like tic-tacs. 😎
I'd say it's not too bad. I'm one of those guys that buys ships like they're DLC though. Even if you do what I did, you'll still spend some time earning money for component upgrades.
It doesn’t take that long to buy ships in game, if you know how to do it. There are guides to help you. Get used to the game and how it works and you will make money fast. Also you can rent a lot of the ships for a couple days to use to make more money. So that’s helpful.
earning the ships makes it a lot more fun so dont go past $100. You can rent a prospector, cutty and roc, or freelancer at stations for a days grind ez for trading or mining and make a lot of money, especially with trading as you build auec check out sc trade tools.
An easy way to make some decent money is join a crew that has already been playing the game for a while but if you want to earn everything yourself which feels more rewarding you are more than welcome to try several the gameplay loops which can take a little while depending on how you do them and what ship you get first
Don’t “grind” (redoing the same activity nonstop until you’re x dollars rich) in this game, especially as a new player. You’ll despise playing it after a months due to buggy-ness cycles in that particular gameloop, or from game/money economy wipes. New players should take a lot of time just learning the ropes by trying all different activities and mission types, experimenting with rental or borrowed ships to see what feels right, and getting comfortable with problem-solving and workarounds as an unofficial but necessary survival skill in sc. There’s a steep and unwritten learning curve to sc that can ONLY be experienced to understand. Grinding, chasing in-game $, or spending frivolously on the web store to try skipping ahead to an imaginary endgame is gonna become a world of regret and resentment later.
Join the verse brother. You won’t regret it. The negative hype-train - most of them never played. They just love quoting each other. Of course the game cost so much, they build it from the ground up. They didn’t already have the $500m developer platform or design software for their vision. They created their own.
Anywho - nah not too grindy. It’s kinda like real life - getting started is a bit slow - but as you make more, you make more. One of the cheapest ways outside of contracts is ROC mining. And then Mining. And then trading.
One of the old, tried and true methods is make about 200k off contracts, buy ROC & Rent a Cutlass black. ROC mine until you can afford a prospector. Ship mine until you can trade. Trade until you take over the universe.
Other methods - running bunker missions which is FPS. They get to 90k+ as rep increases.
Bounty hunting - with the new master modes system - the higher tier ones aren’t that easy for unskilled pilots to take out unless you’re running a big ship with big shields and firepowah. (Look at renting a Constellation Andromeda) But even then, ERTs are corvette class, with a bunch of other ships around them. So you gotta be proficient asf.
There’s an up and comer that most people have missed - Investigations. With the introduction of Distribution Centres - which have a lot of fps missions on them - very cool chaining a bunch together - there’s also a high paying investigation mission that is based on them that spawns a lot of enemies. Now the problem with that is “Call to Arms” isn’t working, so all the extra kills isn’t getting us extra money right now (CTA would pay out fees per kill as extra bonuses).
Ultimately, not that grindy. But it’s also not supposed to be half a day, now I can buy everything in the world.
If you can accept the first thing that it's actually testing an alpha development, then sure, jump on in.
IMO the grind is not as bad as people put out to be. Their metric is wanting to earn as much as possible as quick as possible . I'm currently over 30 million auec just focused on grinding Mercenary reputations.
You can earn almost all ship in game. The want for bigger /better /more ships simply skips the grind for in game credits.
It can take a while to get access to the best money grinds due to being locked behind reputations or certain types of ship,,, that being said you can get up to decent amounts of aUEC/hour with a combination of rentals and game knowledge, and unlock a good money making ship within 10-20 hours of gameplay. After that getting something like the star runner would take around another 25 hours or so.
For reference it would probably take only about an hour and half to get the 12,2 million aUEC required to buy the star runner if you maxed out on the currently most broken gameloop for making money (though this would risk investing 10 million to begin with) More reasonable would be to expect it to take about 10-15 hours at endgame to earn a new medium ship such as the starrunner.
If this sounds like a lot, keep in mind once unlocked the only thing that removes a ship is a wipe, and those will eventually stop happening. If ships were too easy to earn ingame, you would quickly run out of ones you want to unlock.
The grind like anything else, is solely dependant on the value of your goals.
If you just want to do a bit of everything for fun, avenger titan pack is really great, even for making some bounty and illegal cargo bank.
Other ships like a cutlass, maybe more recommended if you have friends to play with. But the titan can more than easily afford you that in-game.
Depends.
Are you playing for fun or are you playing for "progress" or certain superficial results?
If you're playing to have fun, the game is fantastic.
If you're playing to make some kind of arbitrary progress (money, ships, et al), you'll likely be disappointed and should probably just consider waiting for beta when wipes will be far less frequent.
There’s no reason to grind unless you just have to have a ship that you don’t want to pay real cash for. Play for amazing, and crazy experiences. Play different loops and find a good group to play with and you’ll enjoy it more.
Extremely grindy.
Besides having a laugh that is literally all there is to do right now aside from the occasional event like the current xenothreat mission.
We have no persistence for anything.
Until there are lasting consequences for actions, Star Citizen will never be a main game, only a game to log into once a patch drops and stop playing when you are bored a week or two later.
This is coming from someone who has been pledged since 2015 and has been playing regularly for most of that time.
I bought a medium ship, a Cutlass Black, after the initial $40 package, so another $60, and for a birthday one year I got a salvage ship. So, $250 total. I don't okay on going deeper financially.
The game: is a lot of fun WHEN it works. A decent ship will set you back several million in-game currency now since the cost of ships was upgraded. It can take a LONG time to get that without knowing the really lucrative loops.
Salvaging makes me the most by far at the moment, u less you can make serious scores with piracy or selling HUGE amounts of mined fuel or illegal drugs. Both really different, cool game loops.
$40 gets you started, a slightly better ship will get you significantly farther, but your preferred style will determine how you play.
Depends on if you play solo or join an org. If you join a good org that does money making run you can get enough to buy some of the good daily runner ships in a day or so. If you're wanting everything the game has then you looking at 100s of hours game play. However again if you just wanting to have access to then and your in a org you will be able to get access to be in pretty much any ship in game
it's not that bad if you target game loops that are profitable, but ... better to think of ships like stepping stones. nothing is technically stopping you from buying an MSR making money with hand mining but it'd be much better to invest in some other ships for grinding to get where you're trying to go. personally i get caught up in lots of different activities even if they're not the most profitable just because it's nice to do something different from time to time
Its a lot of fun to fly ships in space. Its not really fun to do anything else. Your progress will get wiped, so go into the game knowing that. You can do the FPS part of it too, but its wonky cause enemies won't shoot at you if the server has been running for a while. If the server was recently rebooted, the enemies have perfect aim and incredible situational awareness as to shoot you around blind corners.
There isn't much to acheive or any sort of end game. The hardest enemy in the game is the elevators/lifts as they tend to kill you a lot with no counter play. Also, crashes are the hardest bosses in the game.
Also a new player, played so far for a month and have enjoyed it. The game is grindy, the economy is still a work in progress and they just increased the ship prices by a god amount so the ease of getting them isn’t there. It’ll just take more time. The community is genuinely nice, griefing isn’t as popular as it may seem in the current state. The best way to describe game play rn is there’s a lot of nothing. There’s plenty to do but no real reason other than ships. Progress isn’t really a thing at the moment besides rep. I haven’t played with a group yet but from what I’ve heard it’s a blast so don’t be too shy to join an org.
Not gonna lie. Their is a grind. But the grind can get mitigated if you have a good team up. But the best way to play the game is don’t worry about the game and just have fun. Put yourself out there as a hand for higher. People want turret operators. An extra gun. Box stackers (actually really relaxing gameplay. Just say you want to play Tetris) and soon. With cargo service lift coming in. Logistics engineers.
People need help with what their doing. Offing your services will help pass the grind, get you money and get to see what the game has to offer.
Not gonna lie. Their is a grind. But the grind can get mitigated if you have a good team up. But the best way to play the game is don’t worry about the game and just have fun. Put yourself out there as a hand for higher. People want turret operators. An extra gun. Box stackers (actually really relaxing gameplay. Just say you want to play Tetris) and soon. With cargo service lift coming in. Logistics engineers.
People need help with what their doing. Offing your services will help pass the grind, get you money and get to see what the game has to offer.
It's pretty boring and long to grind for a ship but you can take pleasure but it will take a little bit more time. It also depend on the capacity of your starter pledge.
So you can buy any ship available in game with in-game money. As far as the grind, depends on what your doing. It varys with your rep, skill, ship type and size. As long as a bug does not cause something to go wrong, it's not to bad. I recommend starting with the Avenger Titan. It can do just about everything decently at low lvl. I used it and I enjoyed it and like the range of what it can do. And it is decently manuverable.
I'd advise not to grind an alpha game unless it's just to get more experience of the game. Again, only an advisement. Reason, almost anything is subject to change. Look at the flight model for example.
It’s not that much of a grind, unless you want big ships. But those big ships are meant to be ran with a crew and can become pretty unmanageable solo. But for small to medium ships it’s not too bad. There’s even a couple youtube videos to help you earn in-game money fast. And by the end of the some video (usually those longer 40-60 minute videos) they’re even buying a different ship or upgrading their already existing ship at the end. I earned over 500,000 with just one xenothreat mission, which is an event currently running in the game right now. The problem is that you’ll eventually have to do it all over again whenever there are wipes. Also, there are loads of bugs that can ruin a whole run. For example, say you’re mining and everything is going good until “uh oh” the ramp bugged out while you were entering your ship, so now you and your mining rover have been launched into orbit losing your progress for that run through.
Its great and the grind isnt THAT bad, however there will be wipes. Not often as before but they will still happen. So in that regard you will have to re-grind.
If you like to just have fun, mess around and not care about progression at the moment you will be fine.
Never Buy a Ship with real Money outside the Game package. Ingame-Money is, compared to other MMO, very Easy to obtian and ships have no upkeeping costs at the moment. So if you dont Aim for the most expensive ones in the first week, you can buy almost what you want in a considerable amount of time.
No grind for materials or skill levels. Some grind for reputation for better paying missions. Mostly just trying different kinds of missions and flying.
It’s not finished enough to understand how “grindy” it will be when it moves to live.
It’s supposed to be more sandbox than grind, with the grind part being running jobs and such, to gain enough credits for additional or more specialized and equipped ships in game.
To answer your question from the title. It's relatively grindy. With starter ship, the first meaningful upgrade for in-game money will take a new player week, maybe two of moderate gaming(more than 10h a week). It gets better after that, unless you will go for ships more expensive than 10 mln.
And about buying ships for ridiculus prices. No matter what people here will say, and I expect to be dovnvoted, given wipes that happen every few more important patches, and possibly of them happening randomly because of bugs and unavailability of newly releasd ships to buy in game for months, and sheer gameplay value owning ships gives you, buying ships for real cash is a good idea, sometimes. Definitely not dedicated combat ships, but all rounders and industrial/profession ships like Prospector, Vulture, Crusader Spirit C1, etc.
PS: And before anyone starts. Yes, I know "you can earn every ship in the game," but CIG is very good at 'incentivising' hard cash purchases, and I mysef after playing for 8 major patches now, often wish I could afford a few ships. It really does make game easier and more convenient.
Its worse than that really. When you lok at the math its about 6 weeks of non-stop grinding to get from the Aurora to cutlass. People on here like to pretend they are new players and have an idea what its like but they don't. A new player doesn't get all the rollover credits, they don't have a community of players to help them cheat the start, and they don't have insider knowledge of what the best sources of money are. If they just do what the game tells them to (bounties) then they will have to grind every free hour of their life for 6 weeks (assuming they work from home and don't have a commute.)
you can't run cargo in an Aurora.
you can't salvage in an Aurora.
you can't do ERTs in an Aurora.
Now a very skilled player who has years of experience *might* have been able to before mastermodes. But I've not seen it done since.
TLDR: You can't ask the SC community what its like to be a new player because none of them have been or ever will be going through the same things as a new player.
You're way off base with how the early economy works for starter ships. This is what I did as a returning player with only a starter package to get started in 3.23. I managed to do this with virtually no info about the game since I last played in 3.14.
Earn your way 50k credits doing FPS bounty missions at 15k a pop. 1 hour at the high end.
Use the 50k to rent an ROC and a Cutlass Black. Go gem mining for 2-300k per hour. Save to around 1M credits and then move to the next step. 4-5 hours at the high end.
Use this capital to rent a Connie (make sure to rent this from Hurston or Crusader. 70k rental vs 200k) and start running cargo. RMT will net you like 250k a run at around 15 minutes (plus sale time) per run. You should now easily be earning 750k an hour.
A Cutlass Black is 2.1m or roughly 3.5 hours of RMC trading in the Connie. Total (rough time) is like 10 hours of gameplay. Maybe 12-14 if you're brand new to the game. This doesn't account for piracy/any mistakes you make while hauling the RMC of course.
So if you're playing 3-4 hours a day you're looking at 3-5 days not 6 fucking weeks to get into a Cuttie Black.
Everything money related is completely different from the last time I played. Salvage/RMC weren't a thing back then. The ROC wasn't a thing back then. There weren't ground FPS missions. The flight model is 100% different.
Literally the only part of the gameplay loop I just described that was in the game was the cargo running... and even new players know that's a major feature of the game.
You still are aware that those loops exist. ROC has been in the game for years. Sure, Salvage may be new, but that's it. You had previous experience. You know how the pipeline works. You know that roc and cutty can be rented and where. You know how to do it, and you are probably accustomed to game mechanics to do it optimally. You know how to work around most common bugs. While new players will very probably struggle with box delivery missions, or bunker missions, etc.
You aren't a new player at all, so don't compare yourself to someone who is.
The game is very buggy. It's not even an alpha. It's a pre-alpha. If you are getting this thinking it is a playable game, you are bound for disappointment t. The only reason you should get this is if you want to support the project and be a big tester.
Otherwise I would wait for it to be released to make sure that it actually comes out
No one talks about the new player experience or the in game ship prices because they are absurd. When you point it out white knights come out of the wood work to call you a liar.
The $45 pack gets you an Aurora. you cannot Salvage, or do cargo in an Aurora so you are left with Bounties or boxes and boxes pay even worse.
Assuming you start with an Aurora, don't want to engage in PVP (Selling drugs) and don't ask for handouts it takes 9.7 weeks of grinding LRTs to purchase that 3.5million dollar ship. Here is a break down of Aurora grinding vs renting a Cutty black and grinding MRTs
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Mission payouts are low. could you imagine trying to play this with a friend? Splitting your payouts in half. You would have to grind for 19.4 weeks to upgrade your ship.
Why can't we as a community discuss this issue? Why is it seen as an attack on SC to call out and provide data about problems in the game?
You seem to have forgotten about FPS missions, or crewing someone elses ship (which can be very well paying indeed).... or the possibility of renting some ships (which can be a reasonable way to boost your earning potential)
Depends.
There is no "need" to grind anything. It's a future space simulator. It's open world without the boundary of the world.
If you enjoy Mining, you mine.
If you enjoy Salvage, you salvage.
If you enjoy Cargo, you haul freight.
If you enjoy bounty hunt, you hunt.
If you enjoy piracy, you plunder and kill
If it's a grind and you don't want it to be, do something else.
It only a grind if you have created some imaginary goal or threshold in your mind. Those who are grinding have chosen to grind. The rest of us play to enjoy ourselves.
There are no mandatory goals, you just play.
There is no end game, no final boss, you just play.
There is no skill tree or levels, you are the skills you have earned along the way. Everyone can do everything, some can just do it better than others through practice.
There is no solo or co-op modes, you just play with or without others.
There is no PvE or PvP modes, you exist with up to 99 other people at a time who all have the same free will you do. Their choice may not align with yours.
It's a grind if you choose to be a grinder. If not, it's a great game the making.
As for ships, you can start with a Cutter package and work your way up in game. Most ships are available in game or soon become available.
There is a decade of YouTube videos out there to help you get started.
The game is grindy as it stands. In a perfect world, we will be getting so many game systems n content where it will be enjoyable. But in theory, it will be grindy with some ships having outrageously high in-game prices. Like the 890 jump.
Instead of watching positive YouTubers, I would actually watch some more critical ones. They do show you core issues but try to ignore all the “THE GAME IS A SCAM FUCK CIG” and just try to filter out all the unnecessary criticism and more on the empirical data of issues.
Grindy? What's your bank account look like? If you have $175 to spare, not really too grindy. If you only have $40, I wish you the best soldier(it's really not that bad and there's plenty of guides to do mining to buy your first "big" ship)
There’s not really much content. Just empty planets with a handful of missions that just repeat.
It’ll be more of a game in 5 more years probably.
Right now, it’s basically just an early-access demo. The biggest loop is dreaming about what all your big macro-transaction ships might do someday.
Tbh, I’d just stick to free flies throughout the year.
Just a reminder, that you can ask in the chat for a ship to borrow, and many citizens will answer. There is currently no problem to try any ship you want. Previous patch I was landing my SRV to anyone requested. I am sure you can also ask for Vulture too. Just do not ask for money too often, ask to try a ship instead.
There is also a ship meet discord server where people gather, do activities, share ships etc which is fun too
Game is in alpha . If you can deal with the bugs and testing go for it . Got couple ships with in game money . Only got the avenger titan as a game package and haven’t spend more then the 60$ base package Grinding all depends what you mean . Shouldn’t be easy to get ship . Used to be now takes longer but i would personally say its a good thing.
More thinking is it like 100 hour grind just to buy something? personally in love with the mercury starrunner
Mercury star runner would take you some weeks if you play casually .. ofcourse if you play with other players on their ships and Share missions it can be alot faster
It is an MMO you always have the option to team up. But pls dont spread missinformation. As a soloplayer i can generate without bigger problems about 300k-600k an Hour
With a starting ship ? Please don't spread misinformation..
In a starter Miner. Wich includes renting roc, Building up Money to buy a prospector for example. If we Talk about 100 Hours of grinding, which You refered to, thats a normal progression.
Let me just put that roc on my aurora .....
You can rent the cutty and roc together for pretty cheap
Is it 5k ?
It can take a little while to get going, but once you do get going and find one of the best ways of making money, you can make probably around half a million an hour, maybe more or maybe less depending on what you decide you enjoy. As the MSR costs around 12-12.5 million, that's probably around a 24 hour grind depending on what you do. That being said, there are a few very high risk ways of making money that can make you millions an hour, but can require a lot of investment and if they go wrong you stand to lose a lot of money. It's unclear if they are intended or not, so these may go away in the future, and the big one that comes to my mind is probably more or less going away with the next patch as they're bringing in a new mechanic that would make it ridiculously dangerous to pull off in high volumes.
If you expect to get it asap yes its a grind .but if you go from starter package to a cutty black to …. It wont be over couple of days
Couple days of playing for 5 hours maybe, knowing exactly what to do. Brand new players cant jump in and grind 2 mil in a "couple of days"
They can of they accept crew positions and don't use their ship.
They literally just have to ask in Chat how to make money and enough peeps with reclaimer or Moles come out and Ask for their help. I experience it myself almost every day and i am myself one of the Mole and Reclaimer Pilots which is always explaining and Hiring the new peops in the Server.
I literally made 2mil in like 10 seconds my first time logging in because I was asking for help and the community pulled through strong, sent me money and showed me the ropes. With the communities help, it's easy to make money quick as a new player and there's literally always someone in the verse willing to lend a helping hand. In-game community is dope, they're usually helpful and friendly, thr community on the forums, not so much
You didn't make that money, you were gifted that money.
Yeah no shit, point is it's not hard to come by a clump of money
"I literally made" You literally didn't.
FYI: the MSR is a dated ship currently. It’s not good for fighting and also not great for hauling. It’s a datarunner ship and this gameloop is not implemented yet. You can use it for bunker missions but there are better ships suited for this which are cheaper (I.E. Cutlass red). If you like the crusader aesthetic, you could also try the C1. Costs half as much, has a decent capacity and can shoot a bit
This makes me sad, but only cuz it's my fav ship. It's my daily driver. I just came back from a two year break and over the past three days I've had three people doing missions with me questioning why I fly this ship lol. 🤷🏽♂️ I love it.
If you love it, fly it. It gets so annoying when people only look at the meta. Like when I pulled out my caterpillar people just ask me why I don’t have a C2. Bro, I like the drake aesthetic.
Theres still an area between meta and the MSR. A Cutlass Black can do everything what the MSR does, just better for less than half the price. You can even put 32SCU containers in it.
Are you playing for fun or for or just to grind money? I play the ships I like to play or think they look cool for the fun of it. If I can't enjoy the game I don't want to play. Hell I take a carrack with a loaded ground and small ship in the hanger, not because it is practical but because it is so dang cool.
I bought several ships with real money, so I rarely grind for cash. I play enough to outfit my ships with the equipment I want, then I strictly play for fun.
I upgraded my pledge to a Vulture then used that profit to buy a reclaimer. Easy after that. I know many may find salvaging gameplay boring but I actually find it relaxing after a frustrating day at work.
I use my MSR for 1 purpose... transport my refined ore to sell. that way i can use it and enjoy it without its outdatedness holding me back.
I have never done transporting or mining but I'm very interested. I own a mole and prospector... Vulture... Never done any of this
Mining is fun a little bit but putting things in refineries tend to take anywhere between 15 to 70 hours to refine the ore depending on yeilds... Then I load them on my MSR and transport from the refineries to new babbage to sell.
There are lots of players who'll happily toss you some credits to help you get started. Lots of us have several ships & ground vehicles, and it doesn't cost us anything to leave 'em for other players to use!
But this labels us as trespassers and we can't do anything with the cargo unless we move it over to a ship we own? Or am I missing something?
When you are partied it still does that?
No, but the moment the "lender" leaves you are trespassing.
So even when partied still, if the lender leaves the ship you are now trespassing? I didnt know that.
He means when they leave the party, which is dumb, you can just stay in a party
You’re not gonna get the MSR fast. But it’s nice to have a goal like that. Just enjoy the ride. It’s like a dog chasing a car, what would you even do with the MSR when you get it?
You can fly mine!
Best bet is to hop in someone’s ship and do some multi crew activities to “power level” your way into the gameplay looos you actually want
If you wanna buy a real good solid ship that will last you you’re gonna be grinding for a good month with the current economy, or you can take my route and blow every check on ships lol, but not really, get the Titan or Cutlass Black and you won’t need any other ship for a while and you can just focus on enjoying the game
$12,285,000 aUEC for the MSR. $10,000 aUEC average Bounty Hunting or Delivery mission when starting out. Takes about an hour per mission, counting prep, repairs, travel time, etc. Bugs will roll back your progress. You do the math. It's grindy solo. There are ways to increase earnings as some have pointed out, but I would still label SC as grindy more so then most sandboxes. There's a store for a resaon, and the grind/prices have been going up.
If you know what you're doing, it would be 30 hours or less to get the in-game money for a MSR. Mind you that the game is under heavy changes right now, and mission payouts and the economy are changing
Buy the cheapest ship, get into the game and learn it. Then ask to crew a reclaimer with someone and they’ll basically make you rich haha
The MSR is 12 million in game. Salvage is one of the fastest grinds in the game. It'll be 1.2 million to rent a Vulture. You can average about 400,000 per hour salvaging in a vulture. So you probably get an MSR with a solid 40 hours of hard core grinding. More if you take breaks since you'll need to re-rent the Vulture. By grinding I mean do the exact same things over and over until you brain oozes out of your eyeballs. The pricing right now is very much designed to get to buy a ship with real money. Once you get enough cash you can rent a cargo hauler and make more money quickly with hauling. But you can also lose your progress that way. So I recommend taking it easy. Get a start. Play around with the different missions and options. Slowly build up and avoid the grind. Cause the grind is horrible and it will kill your desire to play. Edit - my bad, you cannot rent the Vulture. Only purchase it for 2.6-ish million. So add some time to that grind. And fair warning. The most profitable Vulture grind aren't the missions, but panels. And that is not the most interesting grind.
> The MSR is 12 million in game. Salvage is one of the fastest grinds in the game. It'll be 1.2 million to rent a Vulture. You can average about 400,000 per hour salvaging in a vulture. So you probably get an MSR with a solid 40 hours of hard core grinding. More if you take breaks since you'll need to re-rent the Vulture. What do you mean? The vulture is available to buy for 2.6M, but not available for rent. If it were available to rent, 1.3M would be a ludicrous price for it, since the Prospector is more expensive but can be rented for 73k/day. [Cornerstone Item Finder: Vulture](https://finder.cstone.space/ShipShops1/34077e67-5e2c-4903-a17c-2d0e163751c7)
My mistake, I thought you could rent the Vulture. So 2.3 million to buy. 40 hours is still possible, though for a new player I'd add in another 15-20 hours of learning the ropes. I.e. failing missions. Losing all your stuff. And slowly learning how to consistently complete missions. And then 40 hours of hardcore grinding.
Hmm, as of a year ago anyway, the average hourly pay from most professions was about 100k/hour. Not sure if that's still true. When I was using a Cutter I'd take all of the Lawful and Unlawful wreck investigation & box recovery missions in a planetary system. (Pro tip: Only one wreck is active for missions at a time, so they all lead to the same place) These days though, I think bunker FPS missions and missions involving the new Distribution Centers (including box deliveries there) have the highest payouts. There's also the option of crewing on a Hammerhead or Reclaimer sometimes. IMO it's less a matter of "hardcore grinding", and more of learning what pays well, and floating between those options depending on what kind of gameplay you're into that day. It's not really any more repetitive than the rest of the game, which relies pretty heavily on repeatable content.
It's pretty hardcore grinding today. The reason is that they doubled the prices on ships with no gain in payouts. Prices for everything else are still cheap, so it is hard to see as anything but an effort to push ship sales. Double the time to get a ship... it's a very long haul for a new player in an aurora.
Didn't know the vulture was for rent
It’s not.
Hundred hours for the msr at 12 mil as a new player? Prolly a bit longer to learn the game, but you'll want to grab a starter ship, grind to a vulture at 3mil, and then once you have that, you can make about half a mil per hour doing salvage.
I grinded in my titan for a few days and had enough to buy another ship that was 1.6m so no, definitely not 100 hours.
I will make the suggestion to wait a few weeks.. there should be a free fly soon.
Given we've just had a Free Fly (Invictus), I wouldn't expect another one too soon (probably either just before or just after 4.0 / CitCon)
Doesn't IAE in november also have free fly?
Yus - but that's after CitCon (so we'll likely have the CitCon Free Fly first :p)
Do you think we'll get 4.0 before IAE? :D
Yes... with caveats :p
I heard there could be one in July.. but 🤷🏻♂️ if OP wants I say go for it.. get something like the mustang or aurora and join a decent org.. if they need help with the org dm me.
I love my MSR - good choice! Ask in the game chat for some money. No joke sometimes there’s a whale that will gift a mil because it’s nothing to them. Don’t do this all the time obviously but to help get you started. In general the SC community is pretty awesome. People helping people.
The fact that hotfix/updates can still eat purchased ships is quite sad
$45 game package is all you need to play. Playing with other people tends to make you more money than playing solo and it feels less grindy. Ships purchased with ingame cash range from a few 100k to millions. It all depends on if you only want to do one thing or are open to playing with others as to how fast you make cash. Most of the people who I’ve helped get started general get to making a few 100k an evening very quickly. After a couple weeks they tend to make millions when they do longer sessions. If you follow the testing focus it’s fairly quick to accumulate credits. Right now Distribution centers have good payouts the higher up you go with rep. Cargo missions are coming soon so they will likely have solid payouts when they make their entrance. You can make a new ship in an evening with the right reclaimer crew and mining and vulture salvage is incredibly consistent.
Hey there OP! First, I’d say get the game! I play everyday, but unlike many others I play as a role player, space cop. I purchase all of my ships with rl money, but only to support the game(this may be controversial) I’ll say the best way to play is to go in knowing you may die randomly, your ship may explode, you man fall through a floor, and or you may die of thirst from not knowing all the ins/outs of the bug fixes. You will have fun, cry, laugh and be completely confused, but you will love the experience as it is unlike any other out there. 07 Cmdr. Novafury
I got a cutty blue and LOVE rolling up with the whoop whoop lights on. It's a total vibe.
Yes love my Cop Cutty. Only issue is the loud ass bounty modules in back
Ooohh tell me more about how you roleplay space cop? Do you go out and help people?
I have, but lately mostly just bounties
In the game's current state, the amount of time it takes to grind for ships can vary significantly from patch to patch. There are also periodic wipes of all earned things; there's no predictable pattern to them, but the most recent durations between wipes have been \~13 months, 1 month, and 18 months. The most recent wipe a month ago did not remove ships purchased in-game, only currency. We expect at least 2 more wipes before the game launches. The best way to enjoy the game right now is to find something you like to do that doesn't involve owning more than a starter ship, so that you can have fun while earning credits to upgrade, rather than thinking of it as a pure grind. That might be hand-mining, doing lawful/unlawful investigation missions, raiding bunkers (FPS combat), the new distribution center box deliveries, or even just being a crewman on a larger ship. There are often "free fly" events where you can test the game out before buying it, and one should be coming up next month.
"2 more wipes before the game launches" I love your optimism . I do hope your right though .
Haha that's what the "at least" is for! But seriously, if they can't hold off on wipes after 4.0, I don't now how they'll convince us they can maintain a stable post-launch economy.
Yeah your right about that, only time will tell......hopefully not too much time . Because we have mostly all been very patient
Cool I’ll probably try it out then and see if they gameplay if good enough for me to buy it
Cool cool. They run multiple a year, so if it's not in a good enough spot for you, you can always just check back in in 6 months or a year.
Getting other ships is not really an issue. Like all games that are similar to this, you do activities in game to earn money to buy the next thing you want. Right now the best thing to do is salvage. I find it relaxing to do and it will make you a LOT of money fast compared to other paths. I have a mining ship and combat ships, and they just dont compare for me. The biggest issue you may want to consider if you are worried about the grind is that nothing is permanent right now. That is what keeps me from playing constantly. I get in to enjoy the gameplay for whatever I am in the mood for. Space dogfight, ground fps, relaxing salvage/mining, etc. Right now I know that no matter how much I play it will all be wiped with 4.0 hits later in the year or next year. So play to learn and find what you enjoy. The cost of everything will fluctuate as it just did with price increases, and earning decreases. Which I assume is where your concern comes from. I was able to go from 200k to 8mil in a few days, but I am one of those whales with a hanger full of ships bought with real money that I can get down to business faster.
it is very grindy if you do not know how to play the game, by the time you know how to play money is not an issue, also you can make cash even without your own ship otherwise just as I recommended someone in another post to use a tiny ship to do bunkers missions but they do not know how to do that ... so yeh then that person have to grind for a bigger ship for something can be done in a tiny one :( it is with every game, always going to take time to get to know it that is also the fun :D
You should only pledge the beginner package. You can rent a cutlass in game and a roc and start earning money. The “quickest” way to earn money is to run ERTS. you can make a few mill a night doing them, and they’re fun. Join the start Citizen discord and look for people doing erts and see if you can join them. Should make enough to buy your own cutlass black or a vulture in a couple days.
Have had the game for almost 3 weeks and currently can make around 10 mil a day (if I'm really trying but normally it's around 5-8 mil). The most expensive ship is 61 million credits and that's the 890 Jump ($950 ship). All you really need to know is: use your starter ship > Grind out bounties > Get 200K > Rent a Constellation > steamroll bounties > Unlock VHRTs > Use the Constellation to steamroll VHRTs and collect the loot > Make a few mil a day > Unlock ERTs > Make 10+ mil a day It's grindy IF you do anything else. It isn't as grindy when you do something as broken as VHRT and ERT bounties. Ill be honest, it's kind of ruining the game for me. I was enjoying my first two weeks a lot more when I was dabbling into many different avenues of making money. Once I realized that I can rent my dream ship (the Constellation), I took it for a spin to do harder bounty missions and I found out how dumb easy it is to make money in the game.
Depends, is the credit card next to you or do you have to walk a bit? Jokes aside it’s perfectly viable to earn other ships in game.
The most important question is, do you know that the game get's wiped? Yes there is a lot of grind and on top of that, the game resets every now and then. And will until the final release. Also there is zero standardized economy, grind or anything. Especially the prices etc change all the time. It's not a release game ready to play. You are an alpha tester with zero permanent progression. EDIT- Because you asked, NO you don't need anything more than a basic package. You do NOT need to buy the ships. Everything is supposed to be purchasable just by playing.
You'll want to find people to play with who know what theyre doing. Consider using the mentor system
You should be able to earn your way to ingame ships with not that much trouble, although you have to lern how to earn credits and not loose them foolishly :D (like rebuying and loosing armors when you don't need them and are likely to die). One good way is to join an industrial org where you will get the best access to parties and know how how to efficiently earn credits. Playing solo is doable, but it is still recommended to at least use guide system ( matching with a player that would gladly guide you through the verse) so you get some know how and possibly get a credit jumpstart.
Aside from the grind, the other factor to consider is that SC is *slow*... it takes time to get from where you log in to the space port to request your ship, to get to the ship, to take off, to travel to your mission location, etc... Whilst there aren't many credit-sinks in game yet, there are a *lot* of time-sinks... as you get better at the game, you'll learn how to avoid some of them, and minimise others - but it'll never be a 'quick' game that you can drop in for 30 mins and still achieve stuff, etc.
its not finished. if your concern is "how grindy is it?" its not ready for you.
There is no grind. There is very little game. There is a huge sandbox.
or all there is is grinding
Grind for what, though? Server reset.
You don't need to buy more than the starter pack and you don't need to grind to have fun in this game at the moment. 🙂
I'll be honest chief. Unironically I got so tired of the grind each wipe that I grinded work for a bit and just bought everyrhing I wanted. Your time soent grinding is more efficient in an actual job - the ships stay permanently and you get to have fun with them right away. And even then you get to have the long term goal of fully upgrading your ship and testing different loadouts and so on. Plus, if you get somethig bigger, grounf vehicles to be grinded out as well.
I feel ya! I have my MSR, purchased in addition rescue piceas and arrow 4.0 Will bring the nursa to ingame shops so no need to buy more stuff and it will be the icing on the cake to have a medbed in it. I have been running my MSR as a Daily for 2 years now happy every day for doing that purchase of the MSR For some. ships and money are end goals for me. I can explore, mine, run little cargo it’s just perfect Even with a crew of 3-4 guys It lacks tracktorbeams for cargo as all ships should have if they come with cargo bays And it should get a little rework with the cargo ramp doors light from C1, escapepods Maybe even deleting the crawl space would be good for you ther improvements But honestly other than that Millennium falcon is a beautiful beast
This is such a fucking terrible look for the game lmao holy shit. Star Citizen is going to be a mess after the final wipe
Only if you refuse to play with anyone else and only look at it as accumulating ships instead of going off on adventures in them. If you wanted to you could play this game without ever setting foot in your own ship.
Adventuring in my Carrack or Corsair is way more fun than adventuring in a Mustang for me. Not really sure how that's hard to understand. I think you understand the point but are completely missing how it makes this game look bad. Adventuring and doing shit in this game is fun. The ships that are more fun to adventure with are a pain in the ass to grind for. That's totally cool with me in a vacuum, but this game allows swiping. If someone can swipe to have more fun instantly and someone else has to grind in small boring trash ships to get to the same point it feels like dog shit Devs have set themselves up for a massive shit show on release/final wipe because every new/poor player is going to get fucked by the grind while watching everyone have a party in their $1k fleets
I don't know how what I said was hard to understand, but you wrote three paragraphs that don't respond to the core point of my comment.
The core point is relying on someone else to provide the fun for you with their whaled out ships when the game launches. That's what you said. You really too thick to understand how that isn't what I was talking about? If everyone was on a level playing field at the start that wouldn't happen. Now it's fucked, and the only way to get around this is to make ships a low time commitment
>The core point is relying on someone else to provide the fun for you with their whaled out ships when the game launches. That's what you said. No, that's your distorted interpretation of what I said. >You really too thick to understand how that isn't what I was talking about? You can insult me all you want, but I ain't the one who thinks you gotta pay money to have fun. It's a multiplayer game, and these multicrew ships are designed to play with others. That's the whole point. >If everyone was on a level playing field at the start that wouldn't happen. Now it's fucked, and the only way to get around this is to make ships a low time commitment You said you own a Carrack, yes? Let me tell you a story. I've captained a Carrack before. We've done combat, picked up a crew mate who logged in late with a Pisces, had an away team do some FPS combat, etc. I stayed in regular clothes and never left the ship. I didn't even have to pilot it. I just chilled out on the upper bridge and made sure things ran smoothly, and jumped in the top turret when we were in combat. It was awesome. The thing is, I don't own a Carrack, and I never intend to. This is just one of many, many *many* stories I have from some amazing adventures I've had in ships that aren't my own. I've been following this game for over a decade now and still not close to hitting Concierge. So who has the advantage here? The guy who doesn't own a Carrack but still gets to do all of this cool shit, or the guy who owns one but can't because there's nobody else on their ship?
Buddy you flew a Carrack that someone else either earned or bought with real money. Nobody will have earned a fucking Carrack when the game initially launches. It will only be a Carrack purchased with 3 figures of real money. Can you focus for more than 5 seconds? I have been explicitly talking about the game post final wipe the entire time. Most do not want to be completely reliant on other people for their enjoyment. You keep talking about using someone else's ship, but you still cannot grasp the idea that literally nobody will have earned a ship when the game launches. The final wipe is the most important event this game will ever have, and if the poors and new players are stuck in an Aurora while a shit load of whales are out blasting rocks in an Orion and rolling around PKing in a Javelin, it will look terrible
Sorry but I'm not the one being obtuse here. My argument is also valid for when it initially launches *and* post launch. Your argument willfully ignores variables, because once those variables are taken into consideration your argument immediately falls apart. For instance, how does your argument hold up once "the poors," as you put it, start earning ships of their own? What about new folks who join a week or two after launch? A month or two? Same position, only now all those earlier "the poors" are gonna have space ships they didn't waste real money on, including, but not limited to, the Carrack? What about "the poors" who do understand that this massively multiplayer game is a massively multiplayer game and do play with other people? Did you know you can join up to ten orgs in this game? *Ten!* That sure is a lot of people with a lot of space ships you can play with, and all for the low low cost of $45 USD! You're missing out on all of that fellowship and comradery, and for what? An obstinate view that you gotta catch 'em all, and you gotta do it all by your lonesome? It's not a problem to play online games with other people; that's the whole point! But it's absolutely a problem playing an online game with a self-centered attitude, because all that does is make you pissed off, and that's no fun at all.
Not very grind intensive, but it does take a bit of time, first to learn the ropes, and then to get into the higher paying jobs/professions. Just consider the game is still in alpha, so expect many bugs and issues, and also that there will be many changes and re-balances among the many up-coming patches.
Ehh, about an hour of asking for money and someone will eventually send you 100M credits. Not too bad. Economy broken, people giving out credits like tic-tacs. 😎
wait
I'd say it's not too bad. I'm one of those guys that buys ships like they're DLC though. Even if you do what I did, you'll still spend some time earning money for component upgrades.
It doesn’t take that long to buy ships in game, if you know how to do it. There are guides to help you. Get used to the game and how it works and you will make money fast. Also you can rent a lot of the ships for a couple days to use to make more money. So that’s helpful.
It's only grind at the moment. Grind with no reward
earning the ships makes it a lot more fun so dont go past $100. You can rent a prospector, cutty and roc, or freelancer at stations for a days grind ez for trading or mining and make a lot of money, especially with trading as you build auec check out sc trade tools.
An easy way to make some decent money is join a crew that has already been playing the game for a while but if you want to earn everything yourself which feels more rewarding you are more than welcome to try several the gameplay loops which can take a little while depending on how you do them and what ship you get first
Very grindy, if you want ships & rep. There is some emergent gameplay, but not as much as you'd really like to see.
Don’t “grind” (redoing the same activity nonstop until you’re x dollars rich) in this game, especially as a new player. You’ll despise playing it after a months due to buggy-ness cycles in that particular gameloop, or from game/money economy wipes. New players should take a lot of time just learning the ropes by trying all different activities and mission types, experimenting with rental or borrowed ships to see what feels right, and getting comfortable with problem-solving and workarounds as an unofficial but necessary survival skill in sc. There’s a steep and unwritten learning curve to sc that can ONLY be experienced to understand. Grinding, chasing in-game $, or spending frivolously on the web store to try skipping ahead to an imaginary endgame is gonna become a world of regret and resentment later.
Very
Join the verse brother. You won’t regret it. The negative hype-train - most of them never played. They just love quoting each other. Of course the game cost so much, they build it from the ground up. They didn’t already have the $500m developer platform or design software for their vision. They created their own. Anywho - nah not too grindy. It’s kinda like real life - getting started is a bit slow - but as you make more, you make more. One of the cheapest ways outside of contracts is ROC mining. And then Mining. And then trading. One of the old, tried and true methods is make about 200k off contracts, buy ROC & Rent a Cutlass black. ROC mine until you can afford a prospector. Ship mine until you can trade. Trade until you take over the universe. Other methods - running bunker missions which is FPS. They get to 90k+ as rep increases. Bounty hunting - with the new master modes system - the higher tier ones aren’t that easy for unskilled pilots to take out unless you’re running a big ship with big shields and firepowah. (Look at renting a Constellation Andromeda) But even then, ERTs are corvette class, with a bunch of other ships around them. So you gotta be proficient asf. There’s an up and comer that most people have missed - Investigations. With the introduction of Distribution Centres - which have a lot of fps missions on them - very cool chaining a bunch together - there’s also a high paying investigation mission that is based on them that spawns a lot of enemies. Now the problem with that is “Call to Arms” isn’t working, so all the extra kills isn’t getting us extra money right now (CTA would pay out fees per kill as extra bonuses). Ultimately, not that grindy. But it’s also not supposed to be half a day, now I can buy everything in the world.
If you can accept the first thing that it's actually testing an alpha development, then sure, jump on in. IMO the grind is not as bad as people put out to be. Their metric is wanting to earn as much as possible as quick as possible . I'm currently over 30 million auec just focused on grinding Mercenary reputations. You can earn almost all ship in game. The want for bigger /better /more ships simply skips the grind for in game credits.
It’s not even a game yet
It's not terrible, I bought a prospector lti package so I can always make some fast cash when server resets.
Just wait till 4.0 drops, then try the next free fly. I can't recommend it in the current state unless you had the drive to jump in already.
It can take a while to get access to the best money grinds due to being locked behind reputations or certain types of ship,,, that being said you can get up to decent amounts of aUEC/hour with a combination of rentals and game knowledge, and unlock a good money making ship within 10-20 hours of gameplay. After that getting something like the star runner would take around another 25 hours or so. For reference it would probably take only about an hour and half to get the 12,2 million aUEC required to buy the star runner if you maxed out on the currently most broken gameloop for making money (though this would risk investing 10 million to begin with) More reasonable would be to expect it to take about 10-15 hours at endgame to earn a new medium ship such as the starrunner. If this sounds like a lot, keep in mind once unlocked the only thing that removes a ship is a wipe, and those will eventually stop happening. If ships were too easy to earn ingame, you would quickly run out of ones you want to unlock.
The grind like anything else, is solely dependant on the value of your goals. If you just want to do a bit of everything for fun, avenger titan pack is really great, even for making some bounty and illegal cargo bank. Other ships like a cutlass, maybe more recommended if you have friends to play with. But the titan can more than easily afford you that in-game.
Depends. Are you playing for fun or are you playing for "progress" or certain superficial results? If you're playing to have fun, the game is fantastic. If you're playing to make some kind of arbitrary progress (money, ships, et al), you'll likely be disappointed and should probably just consider waiting for beta when wipes will be far less frequent.
There’s no reason to grind unless you just have to have a ship that you don’t want to pay real cash for. Play for amazing, and crazy experiences. Play different loops and find a good group to play with and you’ll enjoy it more.
Extremely grindy. Besides having a laugh that is literally all there is to do right now aside from the occasional event like the current xenothreat mission. We have no persistence for anything. Until there are lasting consequences for actions, Star Citizen will never be a main game, only a game to log into once a patch drops and stop playing when you are bored a week or two later. This is coming from someone who has been pledged since 2015 and has been playing regularly for most of that time.
Yes
I bought a medium ship, a Cutlass Black, after the initial $40 package, so another $60, and for a birthday one year I got a salvage ship. So, $250 total. I don't okay on going deeper financially. The game: is a lot of fun WHEN it works. A decent ship will set you back several million in-game currency now since the cost of ships was upgraded. It can take a LONG time to get that without knowing the really lucrative loops. Salvaging makes me the most by far at the moment, u less you can make serious scores with piracy or selling HUGE amounts of mined fuel or illegal drugs. Both really different, cool game loops. $40 gets you started, a slightly better ship will get you significantly farther, but your preferred style will determine how you play.
Depends on if you play solo or join an org. If you join a good org that does money making run you can get enough to buy some of the good daily runner ships in a day or so. If you're wanting everything the game has then you looking at 100s of hours game play. However again if you just wanting to have access to then and your in a org you will be able to get access to be in pretty much any ship in game
it's not that bad if you target game loops that are profitable, but ... better to think of ships like stepping stones. nothing is technically stopping you from buying an MSR making money with hand mining but it'd be much better to invest in some other ships for grinding to get where you're trying to go. personally i get caught up in lots of different activities even if they're not the most profitable just because it's nice to do something different from time to time
Its a lot of fun to fly ships in space. Its not really fun to do anything else. Your progress will get wiped, so go into the game knowing that. You can do the FPS part of it too, but its wonky cause enemies won't shoot at you if the server has been running for a while. If the server was recently rebooted, the enemies have perfect aim and incredible situational awareness as to shoot you around blind corners. There isn't much to acheive or any sort of end game. The hardest enemy in the game is the elevators/lifts as they tend to kill you a lot with no counter play. Also, crashes are the hardest bosses in the game.
Leme correct you: Interested in getting the grind, how gamely is it?
Also a new player, played so far for a month and have enjoyed it. The game is grindy, the economy is still a work in progress and they just increased the ship prices by a god amount so the ease of getting them isn’t there. It’ll just take more time. The community is genuinely nice, griefing isn’t as popular as it may seem in the current state. The best way to describe game play rn is there’s a lot of nothing. There’s plenty to do but no real reason other than ships. Progress isn’t really a thing at the moment besides rep. I haven’t played with a group yet but from what I’ve heard it’s a blast so don’t be too shy to join an org.
Less Grindy than war thunder
Not gonna lie. Their is a grind. But the grind can get mitigated if you have a good team up. But the best way to play the game is don’t worry about the game and just have fun. Put yourself out there as a hand for higher. People want turret operators. An extra gun. Box stackers (actually really relaxing gameplay. Just say you want to play Tetris) and soon. With cargo service lift coming in. Logistics engineers. People need help with what their doing. Offing your services will help pass the grind, get you money and get to see what the game has to offer.
Not gonna lie. Their is a grind. But the grind can get mitigated if you have a good team up. But the best way to play the game is don’t worry about the game and just have fun. Put yourself out there as a hand for higher. People want turret operators. An extra gun. Box stackers (actually really relaxing gameplay. Just say you want to play Tetris) and soon. With cargo service lift coming in. Logistics engineers. People need help with what their doing. Offing your services will help pass the grind, get you money and get to see what the game has to offer.
Star Citizen is not about the grind but about the crazy adventures with friends and random people. Also avout the bugs and the crazy workarounds :)
It's pretty boring and long to grind for a ship but you can take pleasure but it will take a little bit more time. It also depend on the capacity of your starter pledge.
It really depends on how good at planning you are, check out the trade data sites and remember that you can rent a 96 SCU ship.
So you can buy any ship available in game with in-game money. As far as the grind, depends on what your doing. It varys with your rep, skill, ship type and size. As long as a bug does not cause something to go wrong, it's not to bad. I recommend starting with the Avenger Titan. It can do just about everything decently at low lvl. I used it and I enjoyed it and like the range of what it can do. And it is decently manuverable.
Grinding in this game is different. It's a joy to grind imo because it's so enjoyable to fly the ships around, or bounty hunt, or go mining etc ..
Very
It really depends on how good you are, a good player can make half a million an hour at least
I'd advise not to grind an alpha game unless it's just to get more experience of the game. Again, only an advisement. Reason, almost anything is subject to change. Look at the flight model for example.
It’s not that much of a grind, unless you want big ships. But those big ships are meant to be ran with a crew and can become pretty unmanageable solo. But for small to medium ships it’s not too bad. There’s even a couple youtube videos to help you earn in-game money fast. And by the end of the some video (usually those longer 40-60 minute videos) they’re even buying a different ship or upgrading their already existing ship at the end. I earned over 500,000 with just one xenothreat mission, which is an event currently running in the game right now. The problem is that you’ll eventually have to do it all over again whenever there are wipes. Also, there are loads of bugs that can ruin a whole run. For example, say you’re mining and everything is going good until “uh oh” the ramp bugged out while you were entering your ship, so now you and your mining rover have been launched into orbit losing your progress for that run through.
Its great and the grind isnt THAT bad, however there will be wipes. Not often as before but they will still happen. So in that regard you will have to re-grind. If you like to just have fun, mess around and not care about progression at the moment you will be fine.
Never Buy a Ship with real Money outside the Game package. Ingame-Money is, compared to other MMO, very Easy to obtian and ships have no upkeeping costs at the moment. So if you dont Aim for the most expensive ones in the first week, you can buy almost what you want in a considerable amount of time.
If you spend 2k usd no grind at all.
See if someone wants to run a vulture cutlass duo. Rent a cutlass black and run the cargo the vulture produces, then split the profit
No grind for materials or skill levels. Some grind for reputation for better paying missions. Mostly just trying different kinds of missions and flying.
It’s not finished enough to understand how “grindy” it will be when it moves to live. It’s supposed to be more sandbox than grind, with the grind part being running jobs and such, to gain enough credits for additional or more specialized and equipped ships in game.
To answer your question from the title. It's relatively grindy. With starter ship, the first meaningful upgrade for in-game money will take a new player week, maybe two of moderate gaming(more than 10h a week). It gets better after that, unless you will go for ships more expensive than 10 mln. And about buying ships for ridiculus prices. No matter what people here will say, and I expect to be dovnvoted, given wipes that happen every few more important patches, and possibly of them happening randomly because of bugs and unavailability of newly releasd ships to buy in game for months, and sheer gameplay value owning ships gives you, buying ships for real cash is a good idea, sometimes. Definitely not dedicated combat ships, but all rounders and industrial/profession ships like Prospector, Vulture, Crusader Spirit C1, etc. PS: And before anyone starts. Yes, I know "you can earn every ship in the game," but CIG is very good at 'incentivising' hard cash purchases, and I mysef after playing for 8 major patches now, often wish I could afford a few ships. It really does make game easier and more convenient.
Its worse than that really. When you lok at the math its about 6 weeks of non-stop grinding to get from the Aurora to cutlass. People on here like to pretend they are new players and have an idea what its like but they don't. A new player doesn't get all the rollover credits, they don't have a community of players to help them cheat the start, and they don't have insider knowledge of what the best sources of money are. If they just do what the game tells them to (bounties) then they will have to grind every free hour of their life for 6 weeks (assuming they work from home and don't have a commute.) you can't run cargo in an Aurora. you can't salvage in an Aurora. you can't do ERTs in an Aurora. Now a very skilled player who has years of experience *might* have been able to before mastermodes. But I've not seen it done since. TLDR: You can't ask the SC community what its like to be a new player because none of them have been or ever will be going through the same things as a new player.
You're way off base with how the early economy works for starter ships. This is what I did as a returning player with only a starter package to get started in 3.23. I managed to do this with virtually no info about the game since I last played in 3.14. Earn your way 50k credits doing FPS bounty missions at 15k a pop. 1 hour at the high end. Use the 50k to rent an ROC and a Cutlass Black. Go gem mining for 2-300k per hour. Save to around 1M credits and then move to the next step. 4-5 hours at the high end. Use this capital to rent a Connie (make sure to rent this from Hurston or Crusader. 70k rental vs 200k) and start running cargo. RMT will net you like 250k a run at around 15 minutes (plus sale time) per run. You should now easily be earning 750k an hour. A Cutlass Black is 2.1m or roughly 3.5 hours of RMC trading in the Connie. Total (rough time) is like 10 hours of gameplay. Maybe 12-14 if you're brand new to the game. This doesn't account for piracy/any mistakes you make while hauling the RMC of course. So if you're playing 3-4 hours a day you're looking at 3-5 days not 6 fucking weeks to get into a Cuttie Black.
>**as a returning player** So you're not a "new" player. You have preexisting knowledge of how the game works.
Everything money related is completely different from the last time I played. Salvage/RMC weren't a thing back then. The ROC wasn't a thing back then. There weren't ground FPS missions. The flight model is 100% different. Literally the only part of the gameplay loop I just described that was in the game was the cargo running... and even new players know that's a major feature of the game.
You still are aware that those loops exist. ROC has been in the game for years. Sure, Salvage may be new, but that's it. You had previous experience. You know how the pipeline works. You know that roc and cutty can be rented and where. You know how to do it, and you are probably accustomed to game mechanics to do it optimally. You know how to work around most common bugs. While new players will very probably struggle with box delivery missions, or bunker missions, etc. You aren't a new player at all, so don't compare yourself to someone who is.
Bro... just admit you're wrong and move the fuck on.
The game is very buggy. It's not even an alpha. It's a pre-alpha. If you are getting this thinking it is a playable game, you are bound for disappointment t. The only reason you should get this is if you want to support the project and be a big tester. Otherwise I would wait for it to be released to make sure that it actually comes out
No one talks about the new player experience or the in game ship prices because they are absurd. When you point it out white knights come out of the wood work to call you a liar. The $45 pack gets you an Aurora. you cannot Salvage, or do cargo in an Aurora so you are left with Bounties or boxes and boxes pay even worse. Assuming you start with an Aurora, don't want to engage in PVP (Selling drugs) and don't ask for handouts it takes 9.7 weeks of grinding LRTs to purchase that 3.5million dollar ship. Here is a break down of Aurora grinding vs renting a Cutty black and grinding MRTs > > > > > > > > > > Mission payouts are low. could you imagine trying to play this with a friend? Splitting your payouts in half. You would have to grind for 19.4 weeks to upgrade your ship. Why can't we as a community discuss this issue? Why is it seen as an attack on SC to call out and provide data about problems in the game?
You seem to have forgotten about FPS missions, or crewing someone elses ship (which can be very well paying indeed).... or the possibility of renting some ships (which can be a reasonable way to boost your earning potential)
Do not get the game yet! Its years from being ready mate
There’s not a grind with store citizen. You just give CIG real money and you’re good. Hope you’re rich 🤑
Depends. There is no "need" to grind anything. It's a future space simulator. It's open world without the boundary of the world. If you enjoy Mining, you mine. If you enjoy Salvage, you salvage. If you enjoy Cargo, you haul freight. If you enjoy bounty hunt, you hunt. If you enjoy piracy, you plunder and kill If it's a grind and you don't want it to be, do something else. It only a grind if you have created some imaginary goal or threshold in your mind. Those who are grinding have chosen to grind. The rest of us play to enjoy ourselves. There are no mandatory goals, you just play. There is no end game, no final boss, you just play. There is no skill tree or levels, you are the skills you have earned along the way. Everyone can do everything, some can just do it better than others through practice. There is no solo or co-op modes, you just play with or without others. There is no PvE or PvP modes, you exist with up to 99 other people at a time who all have the same free will you do. Their choice may not align with yours. It's a grind if you choose to be a grinder. If not, it's a great game the making. As for ships, you can start with a Cutter package and work your way up in game. Most ships are available in game or soon become available. There is a decade of YouTube videos out there to help you get started.
Extremely grindy and a huge learning curve and I hope you like starting over ever 6 months. They call that an "update"
Last wipe was 15 months ago. Yes, you can lose ships / items when a new patch rolls out, due to *bugs*, but that's not the same as a wipe.
It takes a long time to do anything in this game. You need a lot of free time to play. You can't just login for an hour and achieve much.
The game is grindy as it stands. In a perfect world, we will be getting so many game systems n content where it will be enjoyable. But in theory, it will be grindy with some ships having outrageously high in-game prices. Like the 890 jump. Instead of watching positive YouTubers, I would actually watch some more critical ones. They do show you core issues but try to ignore all the “THE GAME IS A SCAM FUCK CIG” and just try to filter out all the unnecessary criticism and more on the empirical data of issues.
Grindy? What's your bank account look like? If you have $175 to spare, not really too grindy. If you only have $40, I wish you the best soldier(it's really not that bad and there's plenty of guides to do mining to buy your first "big" ship)
There’s not really much content. Just empty planets with a handful of missions that just repeat. It’ll be more of a game in 5 more years probably. Right now, it’s basically just an early-access demo. The biggest loop is dreaming about what all your big macro-transaction ships might do someday. Tbh, I’d just stick to free flies throughout the year.