Me, once I've maxed-out the Tarsus the game starts with, I basically hang around Troy and the surrounding systems, trying to rack up multiple missions with similar ground to cover (like several patrols for the same system; it's like getting paid 3 times for the same patrol) until I reach like 250K creds. With that, you can buy a decently equiped Centurion with L3 engines, L2 shields, AB, good armor, ECM3, 2 missile launchers w/ ImRecs, 2 tachs, and 2 lasers (which, except for the damage caused, perform similarly... no need to worry about multiple ITTS crosshairs). Though not a maxed-out ship, it's good enough, IMO, to make earning the rest of the upgrade money much easier.
Oh, and if you're using cargo runs to build up your ship, before you accept Guild/computer cargo missions, top off your cargo hold with whatever the mission descriptions say to haul. Even with a full hold, you can load mission cargo without any complaints from the game. Generally the cargo missions are asking you to haul something that would give a good profit were you to haul it without a contract, meaning that contract cargo plus non-contract cargo picked up from the commodities exchange will rack up some serious cash. (Just don't dump your cargo for
any reason after loading up like that, or else you won't be able to pick it all back up afterwards.)
Hope that helps...
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SubCrid Death
Official Net.Nazi,
LOAF's Merry Guild
[This message has been edited by Death (edited January 07, 2000).]