I realize this is probably lame, but I don't have near as much time to play as I did when I was a kid. Is there any way to increase my cash through a debug mode or something?

The only in-game "money cheat" is to turn on invincibility and simply trade between planets to raise some cash.

But it will take more time than normal playgame. Missions in Troy (e.g. three the same patrol assignments) could be far more profitable.

Hex-editing save file could do the trick:
http://www.cheatmasters.com/cheats/2389/Privateer_cheats.html

EDIT: But it could kill all the fun...

Heh...don't think you need to worry.

I was wondering the same thing. I didn't see any .sav files to edit. So I am not sure which file needs to be edited.

By default SAV files are in "c:\Program Files\GOG.com\Wing Commander Privateer\" directory. If your OS has UAC and it's enabled then make sure you'll be editing files with administrator privileges.

You can use e.g. HxD.

EDIT: And remember that you'll lost most of the fun if playing Privateer with "money cheat".

I read other posts and I found the file... Do you happen to know what string I need to edit?

No, but you can find it by your self (see: link in third post). The trick is that you must to know what amount of money you have right now (in Privateer, of course).

I have looked for the save file and have not found it.
what extention does it use thx u=in advance.
ktm500mx

On my computer the files have the extension SAV. If you don't have the "view file extension" option selected, it may just show up as whatever you named it and you won't notice the file extension on it.

I wrote a reply to another poster the other day about making money in the game. I have a "sort of" cheat -- I'll repeat that post below for anyone interested in making easy money without just changing the amount in your SAV file. It's faster than just flying buy/sell commodities trading missions with invulnerability on. Enjoy!

Previously posted:

I found a sort of funny and easy way to make money in the early part of the game. You may think it's cheating, but it works!

What I do is load up on the in-system patrol missions, which say go to 5 (or whatever) nav points. (IMPORTANT! DON'T do this in a system with asteroids in it! It's too hard! Troy and New Detroit systems work fine though.) If the mercenary guild and the mission computer don't have enough of those patrol missions, add one in that says to scout a specific waypoint to eliminate Kilrathi or retros or pirates or whatever... and it will be one of the patrol points anyway.

Now here's the trick. You complete each of these mission segments by flying through the waypoint -- NOT by killing stuff. So if you've got a ship with an afterburner, you're set. Set your shield level ONE below your engine level (2 Shield and 3 Engine works great) and you can stay in afterburner forever. Now you're off to the races. Select each Nav point, hit the Autopilot if you can, and then afterburn straight THROUGH the crosshair. You may get chased. No biggie... hit N for Nav, select the next waypoint, aim your ship at it, and keep on burning!

This can be fun as you may end up with a dozen pirates, retros, and cats coming after you, but eventually you'll blow through a waypoint where there are helpful hunters, Confeds, militia, or even merchants. They'll pull some of the baddies off your tail. (Haha!) Doesn't matter though... take a loop around the system, hitting (flying through) each waypoint, and burn your way back to the base to land and collect your dough.

A couple of notes: As you pass each waypoint, check the Nav/mission log to be certain you completed that waypoint, then select the next point and turn and burn straight to it. Also, some missions say things like "Destroy Hunters at Nav 4" and those won't work unless you actually kill the ships there. Look for the ones that say things like "scout" a nav point for suspicious bad guy activity.

Anyway, good luck. If you make a few circuits like this, you'll build up your cash and once you have the Centurion fighter with all the goodies, you can go on and do the plotline missions.

Or, you could just use PREditor. I remember having that way back in the day, and editing my ship to have multiple Steltek cannons. Sure, it sucked down energy like it was water, but nearly everything blows up with just one salvo!
I can't seem to find a link to it, but I know I have it on a disk somewhere or other. If there's any interest in it, I'll see if I can find it and throw it up on Dropbox.
If you're curious, PREditor is a small GUI save file editor that allows you to change a ton of different things in the game. Everything from how much money you have, to what planet/base you are on, what ship and equipment you have, including being able to fly any of the NPC ships, though the cockpits are typically the Centurion or Orion cockpit and this feature can crash the game or irreversibly corrupt your save. You can also edit your faction standings, and even your progress through the story. I am fairly certain the utility will still work even on Windows 8.1/10 by way of command prompt, but I can't guarantee that. You may have to run it via Dosbox. I'll try it out and see post my results.

Actually, I just found it, or at least something that purports to do the same thing. I haven't been able to get it to work yet, but I'm going to try some experimentation with DosBox. Trying to run it via native command line does not work in Win10, as even with Legacy NTVDM, 16-bit applications don't seem to work right, and it just CTDs.
If you want to try it out for yourself, you can find the program here: http://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/PREDIT

This kinda makes me want to dig up an older computer that was contemporary to the game, to be honest. Might be worth it just for the nostalgia.

Last post in my topic necro here: PRedit DOES work in DOSBOX. It is NOT the exact same program I remember using, as it has some limitations, namely only allowing you to use level 1 Steltek guns as opposed to the upgraded ones, and you cannot use NPC Ships. However, considering the NPC ships were glitchy anyhow, this pretty much does everything else I expected it to. It works just fine, but you may want to brush up on your DOSBOX-fu for getting it running without a lot of weird directories. I'll provide my proper mount for an example of how to get it working, and it SHOULD work for most people, provided you have the games installed in the default directories.
Run dosbox, and enter the following: mount c c:\goggam~1\wingcom~5\
then just type predit "savefile".sav where "savefile" is the name of the save game you wish to edit. I highly recommend back up the save before you begin.
Have fun out there!

n/a