... c. Making Your First Purchase

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Fighter

Trader

Explorer

Hopefully you've managed to pick up on most of the core concepts up until now. I would encourage you to favorite or bookmark this guide so you can refer back to it as much as you need.By now, you might have some idea of the path you would like to take. The first (and biggest) step in shopping for a new ship is to figure out what role you primarily want to do the most. You can decide on a larger umbrella role before anything else; this can help narrow down your choices. Do you want to be a, or some combination of the three?Once you pick a broad role, let's look at specifically what your options are. I will only be listing ships here that fall under or around 1,000,000 CR. ALSO, before you scurry off to find your dream ship, you'll want to know that rarely, certain locations will offer 10%, 15%, or 20% discounts on ships. To find these locations, check the community wikia page for a particular ship and look in the comments/purchase locations.: Interdict stray vessels, taking their cargo for your own needs.: Hunt down slave traders, smugglers, and murderers to bring them to justice.: Choose a galactic superpower or minor faction to pledge alleigance to, and assist them in Conflict Zones or controlled territories.: Lurk in Resource Extraction Sites and Nav Beacons, hunting down wanted criminals.: Take on independent contracts to assassinate key individuals.: Trade illegal goods such as slaves and narcotics, and use stealth and wit to avoid law enforcement.: Travel throughout inhabited space, buying and selling a wide variety of goods at your own pace, on your own conditions.: Deliver food, goods, or arms to locations in need. This is mainly for Community Goals or independent "Background Simulation (BGS)" manipulation of systems and economies.: Deliver data and intel to nearby locations. Does not require cargo space.: Travel to asteroid fields and planetary rings to extract minerals.: Scour the surfaces of planets, or signal sources looking for anything of value at wreckage sites.: Venture into the unkown, exploring nebulae and planets that have never been seen by human eyes, far from the reaches of inhabited space. Sell exploration data to Universal Cartographics in an inhabited system for profit.Once you get an idea of the kind of playstyle that appeals the most to you, take a look at the table below for a summary of the beginner ships. Clicking the name of a ship will take you to the wiki page for it if you want to see some images or more information about it. A ✓ indicates that the ship can fill that role.The final step after you have decided on a ship, is to find a station or settlement that harbors it, and purchase it from a shipyard! I don't really need to explain this one. Use the wiki link above to help find a place near you where the ship you wish to buy is discounted.