Decide if you are going to sell illegal inventory goods, or destroy them. The game does keep track of the fact that you collected an illegal container. Keep strick control over illegal goods, do not wait.

I recommend that you study the background of each item you come across, discover its usage and do not sell it if you are not sure.
You will find the Rare engine parts will give you a much larger return if you wait to sell it after you have crafted a rare engine but the Seta parts do NOT.
ALWAYS save the legal (gifts), later you will want to win friends and influence people so they will give you training seminars.
Two tips for trade, "sell high, buy low" and "you can't swindle your friends".

From here you set out to establish your trade route. You will notice that your station has an active mission to build a radar dish. This is useless without a trade network.
Dock at the station in your current zone, and establish a "2 response" trade route with any of the Nonhigherable npc's And to purchase the speed engine. Gather any boxes you come across, no need to go out of your way. Immediately leave the station and move to the next station in the zone. Establish a trade route in every station, then move to the next zone. Follow the Highway, go to the closest stations first for greatest efficiency. You will need to completely saturate OL with trade routes. Do not neglect to establish a trade route in any new stations later. During your flight between stations, collect any cargo from recent battles, again do not go out of your way. This trade route will provide you with all of the data you need to support your stations(you will need to repeat this process for each galaxy you expand to later). Time to sell the goods you accumulated during the establishment your trade route. Having followed instructions your inventory is currently over flowing. Sales will provide you with enough capital to establish the radar dish. Use the remaining funds to purchase a repeater. Sell your mining laser.

Note your ship is still puny. At this early point you will be working HARD cleaning up cargo from battles. Do NOT engage any enemies, flee.... staying in one sector seems to attract invasions, stay close to the station for protection....(But this is the intention) Learn how to see the 3d map, and navigate the debree fields efficiently. Some invasion forces stay together, and die together. While others split apart and die in random locations. Save your game often or risk losing hordes of cargo!!! You will acheive one of two results. A. accumulate enough sales from the cargo. B. Aquire a rare engine, thus gaining approximately 28,000,000. When you do reach either goal... Higher a full compliment of 50 marines, an Engineer and Marine officer for the Skunk, an individual pilot,a capital ship crew, as well as the specialist and funds for your station. Then upgrade your ship, I have found that MK2 Lasers, Repeaters, and Plasma.. MK3 Behm shields, and MK3 Speed Engine are enough at this stage of the game.

We now have the funds to... You guessed it, abandoned ship hunting. You need that rohanas container vessel. You may want a defense force, there are other abandoned ships. You will also want to hone your boarding tactics, taking advantage of vulnerable ships you find over the course of your game. Assign at least the container vessel to the station. Do not buy ships, do not pay to repair small ships, and do not buy drones(unless 28mil, buy 5/5 construction/cargo drones for each ship, and station minimum).

Continue battle field clean up, as well as cleaning up your own kills. For variety, mix in some time spent earning training seminars while collecting boxes on stations. You can continue this until you've completely upgraded your first station. I recommend that you begin stage 1 modules related directly to production of goods. Note, this only applies to the very first station. After this station, I recommend the Targons first strategy!



Each successful completion of the rare engine empowers the station owner to leap several steps at a time and is the primary goal of this strategy.


Definition of a completed station. 100% stage extensions, a full compliment of drones, trade and defense vessels relative to the station, trained and funded staff,...
Note the completion of one full station will not provide enough income to stop player salvage runs. Keep flying!


Definition of Galaxy trading. Two warehouses at each ends of each jumpgate set, XL full sized trader vessels traveling between them. And an escourt ship that you are docked on, where you never have to fly the skunk anywhere.(skunks time limited jump drive is slower than normal cap ship jump times)