First a word of warning: RGO is a sandbox game, so a lot of the fun comes from the progression. Using the strategy in this guide I was able to make vast sums of credits very rapidly. While this may seem like a great thing (and it is pretty fun don't get me wrong) just contemplate what the game will be like for you if all your gear is maxed out really quickly, and you still have hundreds of thousands of credits sloshing around in your account with nothing to do with them. Suddenly everything becomes kind of pointless, and you only have the campaign left. If this is your first play through of the game I would strongly suggest to read no further and just have fun muddling through and enjoy the ups and downs the game will throw at you; this forbidden knowledge will be waiting for you later...

There are very good detailed guides on the game already, however, looking around I did not find much useful/specific info on smuggling and the contraband economy in RGO and the advice I found was mostly not to bother with it unless you decide to "go pirate". It is true that for the law abiding citizen contraband is largely more hassle then it is worth, but the flip-side of this is that if you know what to get and where to sell it you can make a fortune with very little effort. Having seen just how easy it is to make money with it, I understand why it was made this way (hence the warning at the start). Is it better than mining? I don't really know because I don't have the patience to go mining, it is undoubtedly a good way to make money. Someone who has used the mining strategy estimated they could make about 100K per hour, but that is with an upgraded Sonora, and you have to know where to look and sell the goods. In my playthroughs with this strategy it took about 2h to go from broke to millionaire, but with the same upgraded Sonora setup, you can make around 200K from a single run.

Just to level set for anyone who has not dabbled in contraband (feel free to skip if you know how it works): Contraband is illegal in the commonwealth factions of RGO, if the police catch you with it they will attack you unless you jettison the cargo. The difficulty with it is that you can only buy/sell it at pirate bases, independent stations with black markets and at certain independent stations where you can buy/sell select items of contraband. It is particularly this restricted selling opportunity that makes picking up the odd bit of contraband you find floating around space largely futile because you may struggle to sell it unless you happen to know where to sell it or are near a blackmarket station.

The pay off for the hassle of handling contraband is some very big profit margins >100%, I'm not aware of any trade good that has those kind of margins. The table below shows the different goods on offer, the low "in supply" price (red in game), and the high "in demand" price (green in game) from one of my playthroughs. I have done some rounding and taken the average price from the low and high range (on a run you will usually have to buy from multiple sources) to roughly work out the profit per unit sold and then scaled it up for typical hold sizes of early craft so you can get an idea of what you stand to make with a hold full:


Prices in '000s
* No civilian "in supply" station
^ No civilian "in demand" station

A quick scan of this table it should be evident that not all contraband is equal, and that indeed quite a bit of it is not worth it. However, we can see that Human organs, human transplants and Void are both valuable and have some serious profit margins so selling a hold full of them can net you some serious credits. The only caveat is that if you have not gone pirate then you won't have a supply of human organs. You do however have the other 2 available to you and it is more than enough to get filthy rich. So that is it the secret to making loads of credits fast with smuggling; buy and sell Void and Human transplants (HT), if you have gone pirate you may also find organs to sell but the supply of those can be very constrained (you would be lucky to get 10 let alone 20 of them hence the gap in the table).

As an example of how profitable this can be, from my play-through it took me 4 smuggle runs to become a net millionaire (which includes the credits made from doing missions + campaign + side hustles on the way), after the 5th run I had more money than I knew what to do with and was still early game. Although as you will see I got unusually lucky on the 3rd run due to an intersecting supply glut and demand boom (but even at normal prices I still would have expected to make ~200K profit from it).

Now that you are convinced to give it a go, where do you get the stuff and where are you flying it too? Table below shows buy and sell locations, I have included pirate ones for info (but not fully verified all those yet). Void and HT are the main money makers, Scag, thralls, and HO are bonus items that can be worth picking up as you go along. Narco cola, bioweapons and explosives can all be sold for "in demand" prices along the void buying route. I have *stared the places I have historically got the best deals from.

* historically had the best deals from these places

If you are not a pirate then you will be buying from all the same places. The Void you can do a circuit of Taggart, Alabama, and Dutch (Typically had best prices and supply in Dutch). The HT there is only really Sweetland (Backbone has usually not been worthwhile for me). There are 2 main smuggling runs for non pirates, the second is very risky without the shielded jump drive as you have to get to discouragement so I do that after I have it (run 5 from my run through). These runs alone can make you filthy rich, going pirate only really opens one other run on human organs, which can be more profitable but the supply can be very constrained (though you can get lucky). Very important: before selling the contraband at each station, first check the mission boards at the stations you are selling, sometimes they have source missions for exactly the thing you are peddling which can bring in 60-100K+ credits for just a few units!


That's all you really need to know. As you meddle in the economies it will squeeze your margins pushing up the buy price and lowering the sell price, but you should have made lots of money before it is no longer worthwhile (at least I did). The rest from here on is for anyone who is struggling to get to grips with the game play or just wants a few tips, and recommendations.

I put the useful commodities stuff that you need to use this strategy up top, so if you are very comfortable flying/fleeing/making side hustles then that's it. The rest is for anyone who wants a few tips for success particularly in the more difficult early stages getting started. First some baseline stuff:

Minimum entry requirements:

• Jump drive (20K)
  
• After burner (3K if you didn't start on normal)
  
• About 3-4K of credits per hold space (so about 30-40K cash to buy the goods in the platypus)

Strongly recommended extra gear to get at earliest opportunity:

• Powerplant 1 (10K)
  
• ECM (5K) [or just save up for ECM3 at 40K]

Essential knowledge:

• How to shift power balance to the engines (look at the left hand side of the command menu)
  
• How to shift power to shields (look at the wheel of the command menu)
  
• How to evade missiles (Afterburner + fly in a corkscrew, the third person view is very useful for fleeing, use ECM if you have it)
  
• You can switch ships with no financial penalty (the smuggling runs are really one way, when you are done and not carrying cargo you can switch to a fighter and take missions for the way down to the next run or go do something different)
  
• Shielded cargo extenders are not worth it (they are too small to be of any benefit so stick with the cargo extenders, which quickly pay for themselves, don't sell your old extenders when you upgrade as the fighters mostly take 1 and 2!)

How to get started
On a normal start the minimum you need to get started is about 50-60K to get the jump drive and have cash to buy the goods. This can be done fairly quickly if you join the merchant guild straight away and take some low risk missions to get the 20K for the jump drive then advance the first part of the campaign to when you need to get to Nevada. At that point you can take missions that will take you out towards Taggart, stopping in Gore to get some scag to sell when passing through Alabama. It is worth passing through Sweetland just to check prices and stock but as it is the only place to get the HT it is often better the first time round to wait for the supply to build up a bit so that the prices come down further as HT are a big earner, but it will also depend on the deals you are getting on the void. If for some reason your hold is not full, you can pick up Holovangelism Vids in Sweetland to sell in Mississippi/Montana where you can pick up Dry-aged Yikyak, Greel Whiskey and Sushi-grade Starfish to sell in Nevada. Any HT are sold in Montana and the Void you sell in Nevada. If you are going back down to repeat the run, then you can get Ceramics and Dry-aged Yikyak (to sell in Sweetland) and Greel Whiskey (to sell in Sexton) as you pass through Mississippi/Montana.

Word of warning on the unstable (red) jump gates: going through them without a shielded jump drive is a real gamble, often it is fine but it can be disastrous and turn your ship into a lemon. I learnt the hard way when a bad jump destroyed (not damaged, irreversibly destroyed) all my weapons, and key components (power plant and after burner), I had a very hard time limping, defenceless barely able to turn, with no power or afterburner, to the nearest station and a very hefty bill at the end. With a hold full of contraband that I needed to sell to get the money back, it could have easily turned into an irretrievable situation.

How to avoid the fuzz
The Dodge police are not as much of a problem as you might think, but if they do get aggravated they often can't be talked down (although I have been successful on one sole occasion) and they do have a habit of calling for gunship backup which are tough ships so are hard to deal with early on. So, unless you can get rid of them quickly, your best bet early on is to flee, this can be done in the Durston and even the lowly platypus, but unless you have the cyclic afterburner, you must shift power balance to the engine and fly in a corkscrew if they are shooting at you. The ECM is optional but is very helpful for avoiding missiles so pick one up ASAP. As soon as they start to scan your ship, go to the map and pick a nav point (anywhere away and in front of you away from the feds!), then shift power to the engine and start to afterburn away. By doing this you can get a very big lead on them before they turn hostile, sometimes even getting away before the scan is complete. [there is another cheesy way but it is totally lame so won't cover it]

The same turn and burn tactics can be used for the other hostiles you will encounter, also using coms to beg them to let you go works a lot of the time (even on Inviolates and infected) and can really speed up your runs. If hostiles are blocking a gate/station and can't be killed/talked down then try to extend the fleeing part so you pull them away, then use the nav points to auto around in a circle and come at your desired destination from a different angle. Doing this can reduce their numbers or often they will be gone completely. If you can isolate one or 2 of them and can get rid of them, then the remaining ones can sometimes be talked down too. Sometimes though, you will just have to find a different route or bide your time.

There are good guides on this too, but getting missile spammed to death seems to be a common thread in the (many) negative reviews of the game so thought it is worth covering how to approach combat against big groups of difficult enemies.

• Before you fire any shots, take a look at the tactical map. Take note of what you are dealing with and how spread out they are. Remember you can always burn away, some missions go foobar and are just not worth it (I find that mercenary guild bounty missions are often harder then they let on)
  
• Usually it is best to prioritise the heavy fighters and bombers, because these are the things that are spamming the missiles at you.
  
• Do not go charging into the centre of the mob. Pick targets that are on the outside of the mob and try to stay outside of the group at all times, for the big fights check the tactical map regularly to see who is targeting you and to make sure you are not surrounded; burn away to get space if necessary to recover shields and isolate targets.
  
• Unless you are packing superior firepower and shields don't do head to head chicken charge downs against the heavily armed targets. Burn in using evasive manoeuvres to close the distance, then flip round to get on their tail. Using the inertial dampeners as they zip past can tighten your turning circle allowing you to get on the tail of the even most manoeuvrable enemies even in the Durston and Beluga. The inertial dampeners are not just a gimmick, it is a very useful combat feature, the "dampener drift" is particularly useful for avoiding fire while defanging and taking down cap ships. To avoid suicidal frontal charges you can also drift across the nose of a group of targets laying down fire, while avoiding a good chunk of the return fire and not diving directly into the heart of the mob.
  
• Try to pick your shots for when you know they are going to land so you can concentrate your firepower, don't fire wildly if your target is doing evasive manoeuvres (corkscrews) as most shots won't hit. You may be better breaking off to go after the others who have you lined up in their sights.
  
• Don't ignore missile warnings, stop what you are doing and take evasive action (Afterburner + corkscrews), the ECMs are worth the money and your chances of spoofing the missile increases with each press so keep hitting that button. At the start of the battle your enemies are loaded up with missiles, so you may have to spend the first part only evading missiles, but they will run out eventually. Use the tactical "targeting map" for a break from the madness and to see where the fire is coming from, it is also a good place to scan cap ships for missile turrets to eliminate as a priority. Don't forget you can shoot missiles down, heat seeking missiles have to hit from behind so turning round can throw them off. Once again the inertial dampeners help here allowing you to spin round and shoot the missiles off your tail.
  
• Using your missiles liberally at the start of big battles can help take the heat off as most of the time the target will break off to try to evade. I find them most effective for finishing off enemies, so strip their shields, do a bit of hull damage with the guns, then as they try break off fire a missile, you can then switch target and hope that the missile does its work, in the least it will have heavily damaged them or bought some time so you can go harass a different target for a while. (remember that your heat seekers have to hit from behind!)
  
• Use the buddy system, they are not one man armies but they can take a lot of the heat off you (unless you ignored point number 3), you can give them commands through coms which can help shape the battle. If your buddy is in cooldown/unavailable then best to address that before going into the hard missions.

The right tools for the job
As for load out, my genral rule is for at least 1/2 your weapons to be the solid projectile weapons like tracers/autocannon/flack cannons/gatling, then take high damage/shield stripping energy weapon(s). This allows for good sustained fire with decent dammage output that makes short work of most things leaving plenty of power for afterburners and shield reinforcement. Combat is afterburner heavy so keeping your power up is very important and the solid projectile weapons make it easy to manage. The weapon speed makes a pretty big difference, in that if you have weapons with very different speeds then the auto aim pursuit thing doesn't work as well as when you have weapons with similar speeds, when you upgrade to the top radar which can track the different weapons you can really see the difference it makes with weapons with very different speeds. Early game, tracers are a solid weapon which pair well with mass driver, ion cannon and the photon cannon, if you chase down a pirate lord they may just drop one for you.

A lot of people seem to find the difficulty curve challenging, as you upgrade your ship the strength and number of enemies will increase. I don't know exactly how it works, but in my smuggler runs, I didn't upgrade from powerplant 1 and shields 1 until after I had made my millions, (so I was running around in end game ships with PP1, SG1 and low Armor the whole time) it was only when I upgraded the powerplant, shields and armour that there was a massive increase in enemy difficulty and the big cap ships started appearing. Not sure if that is how it really works but that is what happened.

As for which ships to use, as said above you can switch with no penalty so try them all out. I will just put a special mention for the Mattock because it is a ship that passed me by at first. Despite the appalling cockpit view (which you do get used to quickly), is a very good all rounder ship, heavy hull, good fire power and good cargo hold, you can only get it in select places but with the cargo extender you don't really need another ship. There is also a mod for a MK2 version[www.nexusmods.com] (slightly smaller hold with 2 turret mounts) which I would also recommend.

It is obvious, but of course you can still do missions while you are smuggling and it is a good source of income. Look for cargo missions that go in the right direction on the way out (on the buying run), then probes and patrols you can do as you pass through on the selling runs. Using the same cowardly turn and burn tactics you can take on the risky (red and orange) gauntlet and blockade cargo runs which often pay more and are a big boost early game if you can pull them off. Just bravely turn your back and burn away. On the buying runs you will be calling in at several stations so you can make a bit of side cash by mindlessly buying the "in supply" (red price) commodities and just flipping them at market value when you need to free up the space. To re-emphasise a really important point: Always check the mission boards before you sell your commodities at the stations you are dumping contraband in because they occasionally have source missions for things that you already have which will net you a big wad of credits for no effort. After selling off the contraband you can switch ships (provided you have the credits) with no financial penalty, so on the way back it is usually better to switch to a fighter and do combat missions/bounties/pirate lords on the way down.

As you pass through stations, check the bars for "news" which often point to free cargo, and bounties for pirate lords (once you have some half decent weaponry) which can drop powerful weapons you can't buy. You can use the scanner to see what they are carrying to decide if it is worth trying to shoot them down, getting a CPC/Flack cannon/Gatling gun or any of the retail high end weapons (tachyon/photon/autocannon etc.) early on is game changing, they are very tough though so use up those missiles. Also when you are starting out, some of the mini games allow you to play for gear which can be a big boost but if you look at the table some are only really worth it if you win first or second time, but the injector, ion blaster and tracer are worth it.


Mini game tips
Slots: Maybe it is just lady luck, but I have found the slot machines can pay out better than expected, with 1K stakes I quickly racked up 30K winnings which gave me an early game boost.

Dice strategy: some people really seem to struggle with this, the basic strategy is to keep duplicates (pairs, triple, four) and re-roll the rest. Going for straights is risky becuase you are just as likely to go bust. If your opponent is leading by high card or hand then you may have to go for broke and re-roll your lowest pair. Also note that these are dice not cards, so 5 of a kind is a possibility, all be it a very rare one, so always roll that last dice if you have a 4!

8-Ball: Not the best at this but some basic tips. Other than the break, most shots don't need more than 40% power, for close range it is more like 20-30%. Use the micro targeting mode to line up the pocket shots. If there are no good options to pocket a ball then either try get yours into a good position for your next shot or try to position the que ball to block your opponents shot. If you try to position your balls around the table to block the pockets the AI seems to have a hard time dealing with it.

Black markets (for dumping other contraband or the contra curious)
Alfred Outpost, Hitchcock system.
Dautry Outpost, Medicine Hat system.
Cordell, Hampton system.
Loreto Station, Juarez system.
Granite station, Rockfarming system


Pirate bases (must be aligned with pirates to enter)
Virian Station in the Gore system
Dante Station in the Thibodaux system
Shanksville in the Rockfarming system
Jellico Outpost in the Tennessee system
Noir in the Taggart system
Godfried in the Hampton system
Red Reaver in the Vacaville system
Darius Junction in the Dakota system
Clanton in the Littlehope system
Blackknight in the Merlin system

Usefull commodity info (not my work)
Supply demand spreadsheet[docs.google.com]
Supply by commodity [docs.google.com]


Cool mods (not my work):
Components for all ships[www.nexusmods.com]
Buy pirate lord weapons[www.nexusmods.com]
Base addons (commodities/guilds)[www.nexusmods.com]

There are also other flyable ship mods and cool ship skins available on nexus mods [www.nexusmods.com]that are worth checking out