This guide offers a comparatively easy strategy to start making millions in X4: Foundations fairly early on with little infrastructure.
Step One
The first step in making money is to have your flyby boarding strategy just right. My suggestion is to yeet PIO Freelancers without incurring any rep penalty and then sell the stuff obtained from them for a quick 500k. Once you have a few of Katanas, load them with marines and board a L Trader that is not well protected. I would suggest a ARG/ANT Sonra or Incarcatua due to their ability to house a small city (I find that these vessels like to hang out next to the PIO Spacelab in Segaris).
Step Two
You should have the potential to yeet many more troops onto other unwary consenting ships once you have polished your flyover boarding on willing L Traders. What you’re looking for right now is a PIO Auxiliary Honshu. I would attempt to discover one of the almost free variants of these lads as they may be found both badly infected and free.
Yeet the Honshu with your refined flyby boarding techniques. If you follow in my footsteps, you’ll have about 7 males on the Honshu who won’t “evacuate” and may need many boarding cycles.
By the end of the process you should have a brand-new Honshu to add to your Katanas and Argon Ls.
Step Three
You might be thinking at this time that the best course of action is to pawn the recently obtained (slightly worn) Honshu to the closest sizable shipyard in Brennan’s Triumph or perhaps Antigone Memorial if you want to be cunning and sell PIO their ship back.
You would be wrong, though. Now comes the scam, or at least the behavior that is close to fraud.
Our recently purchased Katanas will be the ideal starting point for your global fraud.
Place your auxiliary adjacent to a wharf or equipment dock. Bring your Katanas to the aforementioned auxiliary to get their firmware updated (I choose to pick all of the naked Katanas because I’m lazy like that). When everyone has their software, take them all into the dock and proceed to sell it since the ships don’t actually require it. You should receive about 97k for each ship.
Send them back to the auxiliary so you can re-download your legally purchased program. Sell the software dock once more. Continue doing this forever to make plenty of money.
Final Thoughts
Since it produces no resources to support AI economies or combat space bugs, this is not the greatest way to gain credits in the middle or late game. Due to the fact that it doesn’t drain resources from AI economies, it succeeds in the early game.
You can start purchasing naked S ships to repeat the process if you are unhappy with how quickly your Katanas are turning a profit and you truly want BDE. then even another group of auxiliary ships. I like building fleets of 100 and rotating them. takes around 5 minutes every cycle, producing 9.5 million for every fleet. I wait for a new Honshu every time the PIO fields one, park it near to a port or equipment dock, and start another “reserve” fighter fleet.
The entire profit is used to boost my local economy, which turns out to be the big money maker in the middle to late game.
Credit to: They Call Me Nacho