FUI Presents:

The Insane Captain's Handbook to Demo Ship Design

        You've sworn off drinking forever.  If you hadn't tried to do last turn the morning after those six margaritas, you almost certainly wouldn't have had such a headache that 'restart' looked like 'submit'.  We feel your pain.  Don't despair!  As it turns out, there are some interesting things that can be done with demo modules that'll get you on your feet faster than you would have thought.  Heck, if you follow our advice, we can get you into the top 20 with just demo modules.  Trust us.

        The first thing you need to consider as you survey the damage are your money making options.  

• Trade: Trade is what commonly comes to mind as one of the first options a fledging ship should pursue.  Many guides talk about the need to preserve every penny of your starting $500 energy to purchase trade goods.  As we have previously examined, however, trade sucks.  This is especially true for chocolate.  Just don't.  Please.  It makes us cry.  If something has gone so horribly wrong that you need to trade chocolate for any length of time, you would probably be better off restarting and using one of the methods below that generates $400+ a turn.
  
  
• Killing and/or intimidating aliens and/or players:  Experienced players are used to these income sources, but that demo laser isn't going to go far in this department, we're sorry to say.  It is possible to find primitive alien ships out there with a load of ill-defended tasty modules.  The big trick is catching one, of course, so in a sense this strategy limited for a new ship in much the same way as criminal hunting.
  
  
• Medicine:  The basic requirements for medicine trading are a warp drive and a sickbay, plus an ocean.  You've got one of each module and there's an ocean out there somewhere, so this may be starting to look good.  Danger, danger, Will Robinson!  The grand caveat with medicine is that the value of the medicine you'll make while researching at an ocean is (very) roughly $5000 multiplied by your sickbay percentage, with the occasional medicine being worth significantly less but nevertheless being replaceable by researching a new medicine.  That means at a starting sickbay percentage of 10%, you could expect your medicines sales to average around $400-$500 energy.  In itself $500 isn't so bad, but given all the many turns of work that're going to go into traveling from oceans to each homeworld delivery spot, that works out to be a pretty tiny income per turn.  Plus, with a low warp percentage you won't be able to jump as far, meaning travel is going to be really slow, your per turn profit being made all the lower for it.  
  
  The good news is that there's a workaround.  If you want to trade medicine, sell all of your modules except your warp drive and your sickbay.  Right now.  Yeah, if you wait for your other modules to break you'll get your officer skill out of repairing them, the other guides say.  Don't listen to them.  You're insane, remember?  Even more importantly, later when you've got a real ship again you'll be able to do all that stuff without taking big hits to your income.  Right now, every turn you carry those modules around is a turn you're making 50-100 energy instead of 400-500.  Make sure they boldly go out your airlock, pronto. 
  
  With a primitive warp drive and a primitive sickbay you can expect ~$2500 medicines reasonably regularly.  The primary income issue becomes the average time between medicine deliveries.  At a 50% warp percentage, our best estimate is an average of 5 to 6 jumps between deliveries, in the worst case.  Added to that is an average of 2 turns to research a medicine, at the 50% sickbay chance of success.  $2500/8 is an income of $312 per turn.  Not bad for a baseline income, huh?  After just one delivery you'll be able to use the cash to upgrade to non-demo modules.
  
  
• Corona Skimming:  This requires a shield, and nets $500 times your shield percentage, so a two module demo ship with one shield could net $250 per turn this way.  There's a catch, however; 50% of the time a flare will break a module, seriously lowering average income for a ship with only one shield.  It is possible to supplement medicine income with skimming, using a three module vessel, but it turns out to not be profitable:  1666/8 from medicine income with the lowered warp percentage plus  $166 a turn for corona income minus the 50% * 2/3 chance of having a disabled shield or warp each turn, prolonging the medical run or depriving you of skimming income, works out very roughly to less than $320 or so at best.  In short, with primitive modules pure medicine trading is a better route.  Sadly, skimming and asteroid mining are both engineering officer actions, so they cannot be combined for a ~$750 per turn income with the relevant basic or better modules.
  
  
• Asteroid Mining:  Much like corona skimming, except with fewer available locations but also no solar flares.  Unlike corona skimming, unnamed stars cap out at $250 per turn, but that still leaves 18 locations scattered across the galactic map.  Alone, a one module ship with the impulse drive necessary for asteroid mining would net around $470 average per turn, placing that vessel well into the top 20 list.  Less will be netted if another ship is also mining in the same location that turn, but at the time of this writing it is an unusual occurance.  The competition formula isn't yet known.
  
  It is possible to augment medicine trading by always jumping between stars with asteroid belts en-route to medicine deliveries.  The tricky aspect is the heavy limitation of a 33% Warp, which might make charting such a course impossible in some cases.  If it were possible, average income would be around 1666/9 + 166 = $351 per turn.  A clever captain could optimize further by dumping his sick bay as soon as he researched his first medicine, with the intent to buy a proper one after the first delivery.  In that case, the profit looks more like 1666/7 + 250 = $488 per turn, which is very impressive and so this hybrid strategy is highly recommended by these humble authors as a terrific kickstart to any captain's career.
  
  
• Criminals:  No guide would be complete without mentioning criminal hunting income, though mercenary income is now so blatently terrible that it may be safely left to the gentle reader's own dismissal.  In theory, criminal hunting is quite profitable, starting out at $500 for a Heavy and increasing from there if a captain wishes to interrogate rather than accept the bribe.  There are two caveats, however.  The first is finding the Heavy.  This could take a while.  The second is the interrogation process, which can be lengthy.  Average estimates are unavailable at the time of this writing.  Those two considerations bring the average per turn income of a criminal only vessel way down.  However, with many of the strategies above weaponry modules are tossed out the airlock, meaning that a ship captain will have one very bored weaponry officer.  If a heavy can be found fortuitiously or a known criminal worked into a medicine trade route, criminal hunting turns into something that is very nearly like free money.  It just isn't terribly reliable.
  
  
• Adventures:  It has been suggested that there must be something profitable to do with science officers, and there is.  A ship with a warp drive, sensor, and sickbay or life support has all the ingredients necessary to engage in adventuring.  However, primitive modules just aren't well suited to the task; warp and sensors in particular suffer from the low percentage, especially so with sensors.  A high sensor percentage is crucial to efficient adventuring, since instant adventure discovery makes many more adventures available and also precludes the need to waste a turn exploring.  Also problematic for the new vessel is the paucity of adventures that are doable, and the lack of substancial monetary reward for doing them.  Two or three turns spent to recover a primitive module is an utterly horrid income.  Perhaps not terrible if combined with medicine delivery, say, but on its own adventuring doesn't become truily practical in a monetary sense until a 100% sensor factor is achievable and higher level adventures with much better loot become available.  That said, improving officer skills is usually a long term goal for any vessel, and adventuring is the best way to do it.  It just happens to be detrimental to monetary growth until much later on.  It might be possible for a Warp/Sensor vessel to profit by selling adventure locations to other players, but the monetary transfer options in TBG are somewhat limiting in this regard.
  
  Good luck, and may you stun and amaze your peers with your clever use of the humble and often disregarded demo module!

          Our kindest regards,
          FUI Public Essay Series, Article 2

Coming soon in our public essay series, ‘Influencing Without Fear: A Practical Guide for Whomever Keeps Making That Same Anonymous Post'.