Newly created players should start with a modest amount of money,
about $500 -- $2000. This allows them to buy *something* so that they don't have just a crap free ship. Wise choices, say a better weapon or battery, will make getting started much easier.

It's pretty easy to get started. I probably could move from $0 to enough money to buy a fully equiped Valk and its cargo in under an hour, and from there I could get $500,000 dollars within the next hour or two. I could get $500-$2000 dollars in less than 5 minutes. I haven't used the free ship in weeks. If you are going to start out players with cash, you might as well not have the free ship. If you give everyone starting cash, you up a player creation bug in which people will create characters just to give the money to someone else. The more you give, the more often this exploit will be used.

I know you are anxious starting out to get to the 'good stuff', but what you are experiencing that is frustrating isn't lack of cash - its your lack of experience.

Besides which, if you say on your team channel (shift + T), 'Hey, this is a great game. Can anyone loan me $10,000 dollars to help me buy some cargo?', I can almost gaurantee that someone will, and they probably won't care much about you paying a tiny sum like that back.

it really depends cele

if you ask for 10000 $ you will get it , no problem with htat. But don't expect to receive 10000 constantly because you are new, it is a possibility but wil really depend from how you behave in game. If you get your 10000 and you start trying to be the big guy, see I can do this, I'm L33t, then you will lose your money in a second and you won't be helped again.

The intention of the 10000 is to trade , not to get a kickass ship. Once you traded and you have assembled 500000, then you can squander a couple ships on fighting, but never never start really fighting if you are below 200k, isn't healthy, and you will only miss out on manny things :D

cheers

With 10,000 credits, all you have to do is get a bus from 15 to 14 once. That gives you ~60,000 instead of 10,000. Once you get back with another run, you have ~120,000 c and can get a Marauder and start raking in big money like the rest of us.

(Note: With 97,000 credits, someone can grab an equipped Marauder + cargo in 15 and start making 280,000 per round trip.)

I've been in favor of noob cash for a while, and still am to a degree. The reasons I've been a fan of noob cash in the past are listed below, and the reasons I'm only partially in favor of it now are below that.

1) There's a chance that some people might help, but some of want to do things the hard way. I'm one of those who really wanted to do it on my own, although I eventually gave up and asked for help.

2) It's more fun (and more of a learning experience) to delicately trade that 100 credits one sector away until you can safely go further... it grows quickly from there, once you have a few grand, you get a ship with more cargo or go to further routes to make more $$ from the bus. But that initial moment of growth and learning can be the most fun time of an RPG.

3) Some of stink so badly at killing bots that even getting a few hundred credits from a bot is difficult.

4) If the amount of noob cash is so small (like 100 or 200 credits) nobody will exploit it because as everyone knows once you've played past 1000 credits it's very easy to make 10,000 credits. And once you have 10,000 credits it's very easy to make a few hundred.

Now that all that has been said, I'll say "On the other hand" and point out that the devs have already made noob sector bots much easier to kill... more balance in this direction could EASILY replace noob cash. Depending upon how station defense handles targeting noobs and bots, that could help also. So there isn't an urgent need for noob cash anymore. There's also been talk about bbalancing trade to make smaller widgets more profitable; again to help noobs. So with all that the only reason I can think of to STILL need noob cash is:

1) Some very non-hostile players may not want to kill bots. This is especially true if a noob thinks that aggressive actions might hurt them in some reputation system (that doesn't exist, but they don't know that because they're noobs). In that case, give them 100credits and let them trade.

really the main problem is with newb chars is that you can create them over and over and have a friend collect money.

waste of time.

But with all the cargo in 4,6,and 12, why would ANYONE waste time botting there these days? pick up 6 and you got 2k. You could make 100k in minutes in a n00b sector.

makes a mental note of it, and thanks urza :D for the advice

First thing, me is going to do is bot in a noobsector

Renegade, bot in s16, =) 21 turrets stuck on a frigate and wing bots! Yah!!

Lots of fascinating comments. Most against newbie credits. However, what most of the anti-credits people have asssumed is that newbies have half a clue!

A) Newbies do NOT know that they will can get money off other players. It came as a total shock to me (though a nice one) when I was given 30k by someone after whining that janelle kept killing me.

B) Newbies do NOT know that they can make good money trading. The good trading money seems to involve the secret sectors. That really is money only for the "Old Boys" club.

Only one person came up with a real argument against newbie creds which I buy <sic>: Rabid Panda pointed out that experienced players can just cash in by transfering creds. Still.. experienced players, who know the console commands to transfer cash, can probably find faster ways to make money, like trading 18--14.

Another reason for newbie creds is that they get an immediate choice. The immediate joy of choosing what they want.. do they want a weapon to blow stuff up? Or a cargo scoop to do peaceful scavenging? The money I suggest, as so many pointed out, peanuts compared to what you can ask for.

Still... good response to a simple post, I'm flattered.

I did a bit of a test tonight:

Goal 1: Make 1 Million Credits by starting a new character.

Goal 2: Don't get any deliberate assistance.

Goal 3: Get the money in under 1 hour.

Results: It took 1 hr 6min. At 1 hour even, I had accumulated nearly 820,000. If it is this easy for a slightly more experienced player, there should be no problem getting 50k in the first hour of play by a noob.

Things really aren't as easy for noobs. For example as a noob I had no clue that you could sell widgets anywhere, I assumed you could only sell them where they were also for sale. This limitted me to close to 100c per widget per trade. There are countless other things that we take for granted because we are familiar with the game. Also I assume that the current econimy is extremely inflated to allow testers to have access to plenty of money so we can test all the ships/sectors with out caring about our finaces. This will probably change in the final game. Either prices will go way up or trade roots won't be as lucrative.

If you dont have sufficient experience, a special ship wont help you. Best to graft for your cash and pick up techniques on the way.