While browsing some old, long-dead posts, I saw mention of some trade route known as "Miser's Funeral", or the Thier-Gribn run. Just because this board can always use new topics:

What is this mysterious route that I have never heard of, yet appears to be so very popular?

The Miser's Funeral is a run between Thehir and Gribn. Each has a high demand for a commodity for what the other has. I can't remember which goes which but Thehir has a high demand for equipment to which Gribn manufactures a lot but has a high demand for ore to which Thehir has an abundant from its mining operations.

And renegades are everywhere.

There's a far more lucrative trade route in Emalghion (in terms of credits per real-life minute).

Really? You don't mean shipping weapons from Azadra (please forgive any spelling errors, its been a while) space, do you?

Within Emalghion.

Hmm, I never found that route particularly profitable. Maybe it was because I had to use Emalgh (did I spell that right? Its been a while) freighters :laugh:

Its Emalgh a , but yeah, that would definately cut into your profit margins. E.Freighters have too much cost to not enough cargo room (and are really weak to boot). The run doesn't actually generate much revenue per-trip, but the ability to complete a run in a matter of seconds makes it really time-efficient.

The smart thing to do would be to capture a few Voinian Supply Ships, I think...

What I would do near the start of the game (once I figured this out) was hire cargo transporters, trade between Thehir and Gribn, accumulate money and use this to hire more cargo transporters... and use them to own renegades. One cargo transporter by itself is a weakling, especially when controlled by the AI, but if you've got six cargo transporters that fly in formation with you, that's like having six blaze turrets of your own, not counting your own ship's weaponry (which was usually a few blaze cannons in a shuttle or scoutship). You just have to be careful not to let one of them take all the damage and die, or die yourself. I plundered many a turncoat with my deadly fleet of six cargo transporters, full of equipment or metal. It's a good way to begin a game--making money and upping your combat rating and fighting pirates all the while.