Nor's Circular Trade Run
Personally, I find back and forth trade runs boring. Sure if you're trying to max out rep with a particular location, that's the way to go, but if you're fast enough, and your cargo bay can hold enough, it's possible to tank a location's economy with that item––or in some cases, deplete the stock completely. Even if you don't empty a location's stock, rapid purchasing of an item can nudge the location's selling price up, eating into your profit.
Additionally, if you're in a guild war, or if you've made a few enemies, mixing up your trade route's is a good idea.
I'm going to start by contradicting myself...to start the circular trade run, you need to first get your Jupiter Rep high enough to get 2k worth of heat resistance mods.
Step 1: Space and Speed
You'll want to pile on the cargo space and EE mods for this run. You can skip the cargo shielding if you're not in a trade war, have no enemies, and are under level 10––people tend to leave sub-10 pilots alone for the most part.
Step 2: HR
There are a variety of combinations to get to 2,000 HR. But the only way to get them is from boosting your Jupiter rep. Sadly, there are no Jupiter drones to boost for rep like with Earth or Mars so you'll have to do it by trading and completing any Jupiter missions you come across.
You can purchase Small Helium Canisters from Jupiter and sell them to Gem. While you're at Gem, load up on Empty Gas Cylinders and then bring those to Jupiter keep looping that until you've got your Jupiter rep to where you can get 2k HR.
Step 3: Pre-Merc Rep Route
You've got two options now:
- You can start the circular trade route to start building rep on Mercury, Jupiter, and Eris, or you can try and maximize your Mercury rep to get this bad boy:
This mod will free up a lot of mod slots for cargo space and EE mods. If you want to focus on Mercury rep, then run Jupiter Gas to Mercury, buy those cheap cheap Energy Cells from Merc and sell them to Jupiter.
Step 4: The Circular Trade Run
Now that you've got your Mecurean Trade Optimzier, or you're just moving on, it's time to start the run!
Leg 1: Jupiter Gas to Mercury
It's great money and it'll build both your Jupiter and Mercury Rep
Leg 2: Mercury's Energy Cells to Eris
Buy the cheapest energy cells in the system and sell them to Eris, the location that pays the most for cells.
Leg 3: Eris' Empty Gas Cylinders to Jupiter
Eris sells those Empty Gas Cylinders too, so load em up, and head to Jupiter
You can loop this route as long as you want! I like this because it allows for some longer trips, which are ideal when real life things like work or school come up. You can just set course, engage, and then come back later.