Contraband Near New York

[jammi]

Well, your options are going to be fairly limited, in all honesty. Contraband routes are balanced to only really be profitable over long distances, so short haul doesn't make much money (and doesn't even exist in some instances).

One option would be Artifacts from Beaumont Base in Texas to Planet Manhattan, which makes a respectable 330c/s. Similarly, you could run Artifacts from Barrier Gate in Coronado to Planet Manhattan for the slightly rounder figure of 348c/s.

Cardamine... really just doesn't have good local resale routes to Manhattan. Mactan in Magellan (236c/s), Fort McMurray in Alberta (237c/s), Cape Wrath in Newcastle (318c/s), Cochrane Depot in Ontario (337c/s). For short run Cardamine hops, Cochrane (Lane Hackers) are going to be your best bet. The Rogue Destroyer hidden out by Pittsburgh does technically sell Cardamine, but at so similar a price to Manhattan that it's not worth bothering with - we're talking a $50 price difference per unit.

Seeing as sooner or later you're going to need to be able to dock on Rogue, Hacker and Outcast bases, you've got two options. Firstly you could take the easy route and use a restart for Junkers in order to set yourself up with appropriately neutral rep. You can then either RP a Junker smuggler, or droprep the IFF and change it for Freelancer and get the Freelancer IFF to go with it.

Alternately, there's the more difficult and fiddly route for getting bribes for the relevant factions. You could probably find all the ones you're looking for on Junker bases like Rochester/Beaumont, or Freeports like Ames or FP4. This is the route to go if your character is already somewhat established, seeing as using a restart will literally restart your ship back to its basic startpoint, wiping any progress you've made.

OH, would also strongly recommend grabbing Freelancer Companion. It's a mapping tool that lists tons of useful commodity information so you can put routes together without having to fly around in-game. Very useful and convenient for planning your smuggling empire.

Hope that helps!

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