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the question in the title can be answered with YES... if you only do "play Star Citizen" for virtual space money. the question in the title can be answered with NO... it doesn't matter if you trade or do cargo - elevators may NOT work, both, hauling & trading cannot be accomplished - and they often do no work. also no to hauling - you'll make fairly good amount of money with ships you buy or rent in-game (unless canopy fighters). that's amazig, you can rep up, spend a lot of time but at the end, still not have enough money to have a decent cargo ship like Hull C (space only), Caterpiller (bad for solo) C2/M2 (cost and resource intense) to scale your business. also no to trading - you'll loose virtual space money and the time you spend to make that money as well as the effort to transport from buying to selling location. we spent 2.32 hours to find a shard and region, where the elevators worked. transported the already paid goods to the selling point. the receivin commodity terminal showed money transfer, the boxes had been vanished as well the hypotetical profit. In the warehouse no boxes but popped up in the inventory. Box transfer worked, but money transfer not.

As many had said already, chaining contracts is the way to go. I probably made 800k without trying too hard on a Connie Taurus.

When hauling, keep in mind errors in text. Sometimes, the same location is listed twice in the objectives, but there are two loactions in the actual mission text message. And i believe the source and destination locations can be reversed and wrong, I was scratching my head on one or two occasions, when contracts wouldn't complete for no reason. So hauling has problems that will screw you over too, but you wont lose your own money. Lastly, for those just getting into Hauling, or havent encountered the issue yet, you cannot mix and match containers and contracts. a container for a contract will only count for that contract when delivered to destination elevator. Example, you take 2 or more contracts for different destinations that all have Copper in them. You throw them all in your ship and then randomly take the required amount of Copper and deliver them at one destination. One to all of them could be from the wrong contract. This makes all of this even more tedious than it already can be.

i still cant buy anything for my hull c even when selecting "select location" since when selecting hull c it does not work really bummed

Why can't you speak English?

Simple Answer, Self Sponsored cargo trading is dead IMHO. Bugs cost me millions, where missions are more dependable. Even if there are bugs, I don't run the risk of losing my investment because of SC jank. Caveat, I have to be able to open my Hab, and use elevators 7/10 times they're broken.

Right now there's no question that missions are going to outperform. I can chain 6 rookie routes between Seraphim and Orison for 50K each. That means 300K per trip, less than 50 SCU to carry, very little risk of my own credits and hangars that are more likely to work than other locations.

As a former heavy trader, now converted to hauling missions for money and piracy for fun, I can tell you hauling missions are not killing "free" trade. What damaged it the most according to my personal and friends' experiences are the fracked up elevators and other similar bugs. It's been going on for months now, and I better lose a contract and some time (hopefully not the rep) where I invested 0 aUEC than losing a 10M aUEC worth of cargo because the elevator ate everything, or the game crashed and lost my ship, or more recently the ship elevator ate my ship with cargo in it.

In the end it will kill off piracy too. And theres some of them I have no issues in that happening.

Hey buddy, well needed this video, just getting back into the game and want to try hauling.

You could have also earned another 50k by doing a small direct planetary cargo mission from everus to Lorville.

I agree free trading is dead until hauling is nerfed (and you know it's inevitable). When you buy $440k only to find your ship breaching the hanger floor like a playful porpoise, that alone was plenty of motivation to do hauling.

i don't think free trade is gonna die... it may take a break for a bit while they smooth out different parts of the game, but eventually it will re-emerge when more systems open up and profits from free trade make it lucrative enough for people to make the runs. cargo running is just a practice run for aspiring traders to get used to making the runs

Whats needed is filters/search function scrolling through over 100 missions is tedious. Also quicker way to select multiple missions, instead it opens up a new screen and you have to go back to the mission list start again. Also try the Cat it's great for hauling missions, separate loads into the numbered compartments. So deliver to HUR-4 goes into Compartment 4 - Just super quick. Also tractor beam works great.

it really doesn't matter, there isn't a game anyway. it is a tech demo that has run its course and is now a pile of rubbish. I have a to invested BUT i will have to write it off. it is destined for the bin! I had hope but the past 2 years, at least, have proven it is not meant to be!

It is the time sink manual loading of Cargo that kill the trading in Star citizen. No one will do it any more!

Imo, hauling contracts killed small / medium ship free trade or any trading at locations that won’t autoload / unload. I use the C2 and Hull C but as others have said you can loose millions due to bugs. Especially in those ships depending on the commodity.

I’m running 9 hauling contracts in a Starlancer with an ATLS in a little over an hour and making 450k with no investment on my part

I’m at Member Rank and do a PT->Sakura->Greycat->NB run in my ConnieT. 6 contracts (4 Member, 2 Rookie) for 576k.

Autoload doesnt work for my C2 :(

if they doubled the profit margin on free trade speculation then it might be worth the risk. currently it's not worth it

the easy answer is missions because other than time you have no skin in the game. Profits on speculation need to be double what missions provide to be worth the risk for anyone with any common sense

I think once everything calms down hauling will fall back into place but right now the money maker is Baijin to Riker, all 6 of the 50k missions, average 8 boxes each....rpt to fade. It's boring and hangar queues are becoming an issue, but it's best payout for effort put in.

I like the contracts because we all know the current state the game is in. If i do hauling missions I recommend choosing the ones to/from stations/cities/cargo (distribution) centers because the elevators in hangars just work more relaiable. Can recommend Bajini -> Riker and Everus -> Sakura Sun (there are often like 6 contracts for the same route) Also I agree, a filter would be so useful in the Contract Manager!

The bugs have caused the end of free trading.. having to risk so much to have it not lost to a pirate but lost to the game destroying your ship when you call it for example.

Easy solve, having trade materials that you only get from buying, never appears in contracts.

Free trade is for miners and large mining orgs. In the past while mining, I would discard the cheaper materials in order to fill a ship with the expensive ones. Now that you can stockpile freight, everything mined can be saved and sold in bulk.

I will be master rank in trading sometime today. I can assure you even before I see the master rank missions that the contracts are better. I can do 2 experienced contracts down and then 2 back up to the starting point. The missions payout is 2 x 160k and 2 x 163k. Each round trip pays out 646k with no risk in a C2. If you have a Haul C well it's even better with one pickup and one drop off for 717k at senior level. For master I heard it over 1 million. So yeah risking thine own auec is on life support.

Dang I need to get to junior rank,these rookie contracts don't pay enough for me to move my starlancer. I may rent a hull-a and grind out rookie contracts.

What’s ended free trade is broken freight elevators! Can’t trade anything you can’t physically put in your ship.

I just chained 13 Member level missions in my Starlancer Max. All of them went to just 4 locations. Took me about 1 hour 45 minutes round trip and I made 1.25 million credits. With profits like that, commodity trading is most certainly dead.

Too risky to do trade . Bugs can wipe out millions .

Agree that contracts are a better bet now than free trading. It's not the hauling contracts at fault; there isn't enough margin on commodities. One 'gotcha' with hauling missions to watch for is that if you're using a Polaris as a base for mining/salvaging, dock at a space station and fancy picking-up a hauling mission while you're there... you can't. There looks to be no way to get to hauling contract boxes and then move them manually to a ship that's parked on a docking arm. And the only option at space stations for a Polaris is a docking arm.

Missions definitely the best way to go in the current game state, safe from game crashes and pirates. I recommend checking out sc trade tools some good profit to be made.

I don't completely understand but this explains a lot at the same time

Not remotely interested in pyro

The final release will not resemble anything we see today in alpha. ? Testing features once or twice helps, but mindless grinding for nothing is OCD, self destructive, waste of electricity, and abusive. Refuse to grind for nothing, send a message.?

Can I do the same thing with the Polaris? Hiw would I sell cargo from the Polaris otherwise cause it has you go to a docking collar every time in pyro

What do you do about separating cargos? If I get 4 different jobs delivering stems for an example, it makes me drop off that Specific cargo box or it doesn’t count, In your video, it seems like it doesn’t matter, Or are you separating them by job? Thanks for all the help

I did that one time at member rank went all the way down to rookie. I do not recommend.

Good video! Small note, in my personal opinion: I'm a bit irked when a creator asks me to like the video when I don't know if I like it yet - the reminder is good, but remind me when I've seen enough of the video to know I like it!

i wish i could do this but i went on a run got to selling and it just says to me "cargo removal failed items pending transfer"

Have you had a issue where you go to sell and it gives you a error saying auto unload cant complete type deal

Would love Emily !

Since my Cutty Black this is first ship that I like. Had C1 and tried Zeus in-between. C1 was very practical for the size, Zeus was too cramped but small footprint, Starlancer is practical and got character, at least for me. Ofcourse it's not perfect, could be more on grid cargo easily, could be little faster in master mode.

What ship is that freelanser max??

NEVER abandon a job or submit a job with less than 80% cargo delivered. You lose way too much rep for that. do that one too many times and you lose ALL rep with Covalex, and you have to wait a couple days and then start over from nothing. (Ask me how I know this...) If you want to start fresh just log out and back in your contracts all go poof and you start with no contracts and you lose nothing from the ones you had being removed. Submit is best used when you lose a crate somehow but most of the cargo was delivered. Though you see some people doing cargo missions and only taking the biggest crates and ignoring everything smaller. I just save submit for those missions where I get an outpost where the elevator doesn't work and the percentage of cargo I can't deliver because of it is not very high.

Very helpful, thank you! Worked perfectly.

I lost 2.7mil trying to run commodities with the auto load feature. I only meant to buy one unit but out of habit I hit max lol and it didnt complete the transfer

Don't submit just abandon. I've abandoned dozens of hauling contracts and it has cost me 0 rep loss.