X4: Foundations – How to Make Money in Early Game

Early Game Money Tips

• Attack and capture every minataur you can. (The pirate ones) – shouldn’t get you into trouble if you scan first and gives you a free ship.

• Def invest into some standalone miners if like me you are always spending all your free cash. They boost rep as well.
• Capturing large – scan freighters. I do a surprise dump of marines then run, but you need a large multiple of power. Sell the mines laser towers etc, and you can probably downgrade the engines on those destined for safe areas.
• Get the free ody in the xenon sector – great for boarding / sector protection / capturing other pillagers.
• Capture all the pillagers ody / phoenix etc. Again no problem with local security. Downgrade the engines / front guns if you want to get cash. Or sell.

• Find the pirate stations where you can buy the hacking / slicers / emp bombs.
• Hacking a shield console etc – around 500k a time. After getting teleport you can have a few discos flying to your next target.

• Do the early missions that give free ships. Hat, split – free dragon.
• Hat /sca? Giving missions to capture a specific type of ship – bonus of a million at a time and you don’t have to handover a ship.
• Boarding builder ships. If you are really cruel hunt out the ones with a low crew strength, hire them to construct a stations in the middle of nowhere and drop your marines on just before / after they finish your construction. May be a high rep damage though.

Not sure how many of these help for those starts. I grabbed the HQ from my terran start and stayed in commonwealth space for a long while on my last playthrough.