I grew up on Universe 1 and recently started playing it again.

I then found Universe 2 and figured I'd give it a try, and while it's similar, it certianly is a different beast.

My biggest issue is I can't figure out how you actually make money in this game. The passengers to fuel doesn't seem to really net a profit, for every 5 goods I buy maybe 1 makes a little money and the rest lose money, ore isn't plentiful enough to make money, at least in the early game, and the same goes for piracy.

So how the heck do you stay afloat? Or are you just supposed to hang on until you're called for "missions"?

If memory serves... (and it may not; I haven't played this game in almost 30 years, so if I'm way off base, I apologize)

1) Find a passenger route or two that maximizes the cost/benefit ratio. Some routes require more jumps than others; you get more money per passenger, but your fuel costs can double or triple. Any time you can upgrade your gear (drives, passenger space, etc.), the ideal routes may change.

2) For market trading, you have to watch the prices and make sure you buy low. I remember hitting Pause A LOT, and also filling pages with notes on various goods.

3) You can carry a full load of passengers and cargo at the same time; once you've found the optimal passenger route(s), pay attention to the types of goods the destination wants, and key on them at the market.

4) If you want to get into mining, don't hire the first specialist to come along. Check at various planets. Also, save up for the better-rated equipment. (Also, don't try to mine when your hold is full of cargo.)

5) Patience. The grind is intentional. You can play optimally and still take forever to feel financially safe.

I realize I'm coming in almost a year late, but given there is virtually no online help anywhere for this game, I thought I'd add some comments here in case you circle back or anyone else is ever looking for some tips to get started. I played this game back in the 80's and had the same feeling as you - there is enough starting money to get into anything you want to do, but it runs out fast and seemingly faster than you can make it. After re-starting with 40 years more life experience to draw on, I can say that making enough money to survive is possible, but it is a grind. I've wanted to replay this game for decades so I am going to take a serious run at it and will do my best to make it through. I'll be doing that with no tips, cheats, walkthroughs or any kind of resources available other than the manual but will try to keep my eye on this forum periodically in case anyone else starts the game and wants to swap intel.

First, your ship is fully functional at the start of the game, but far from optimum for any purpose. Also, everything in this game comes down to squeezing energy out of Ore IV so buying an upgraded converter (the 91 sophistication one) will immediately make everything you do 50% more efficient. If you want to focus on trade and passengers, you need to upgrade your orbital shuttle so you can mostly fill your hibernaculum in one trip. Picking up 50 passengers vs. 10 is a massive improvement. For trade, you need to be patient and really watch the prices in the marketplace. Identify your destination (it should be lower in sophistication than where you are by 1-10 points), then choose a category of goods that isn't illegal at the destination, then watch the prices in that category long enough to find an average price for a handful of goods that are suitable. Don't buy anything that isn't at least 20% below the average since you're paying 7-9% tax on both purchase and sale and the spread from planet to planet isn't reliably that large. Once you've filled your shuttle with buy-low goods and a full load of passengers, you should be able to make a good profit on the transit. I've been running a loop of Vromus Prime - Zeath - Grotto and back (no goods purchased at Grotto since they can't be sold at VPrime) and it was lucrative enough for me to upgrade my drives and get back to 200,000 credits in a couple of loops.

Ramscoop mining is also potentially profitable, but you need patience and an engineer of high-enough grade that he can fix every system on your ship. If you upgraded your converter and bought a ramscoop, that means finding and hiring a grade 16+ engineer. Once you've got a ramscoop and engineer, you find a gaseous planet, get into a skim orbit and start mining. You'll take damage to a random system periodically. From a couple hours of doing this, I'd say it's around a 4% chance per in-game minute and any system on your ship could be hit. It feels like the odds of damage are low in the first 30-45 minutes and then get steadily worse the longer you stay in. Could just be my feeling though. (Edit to add: different gas planets have different Ore IV concentrations and seemingly different damage risks. The more OreIV in the atmosphere, seemingly the higher chance of damage per minute.) Anyway, you need to carefully watch your systems to make sure you pull out before any critical systems are destroyed, then go to the engineering interface, fix everything and go back in for more. It's a bit tedious, but I was able to get 250,000 Ore IV in an hour or two background playing while watching TV. At 1 for 1 Ore IV to credits, that's a significant haul at the cost of maybe 10,000-12,000 in crew pay plus provisions for the couple of in-game months that that took. Upgrading your ore storage system could turn this into the only thing you need to do to make enough money in this game, but personally, I prefer to mix it up and use this to refuel my ship and trading/passenger hauling to earn credits.

I'm planning to try some actual mining, but will need to upgrade my ship to a different class and buy some additional systems before I can do that.

From careful study of the manual (and childhood memory), I think piracy looks both extremely expensive to get into and extremely risky, though I haven't tried it this play-through yet. 1980's me remembers accidentally destroying target vessels more often than having a chance to even attempt boarding and finding precious little to loot when I did succeed. That said, I doubt I was thoughtful enough to target mining/merchant vessels and probably went after research vessels since they would have been the easiest targets. Taking a mining ship with a hold full of Ore I would be a major score in this game and I think the designers would have been thoughtful enough to fill ships in ways which are consistent with the world they designed. We'll see one day. As the story progresses, I'm sure there will be a need to engage in ship-to-ship combat, but funding that, plus marines for boarding is a lot to manage and all that would be a constant drain on my trading/mining operations so I'm putting it off until I need to or have so much cash that I can afford the luxury of being armed and dangerous.

Edit to add: with respect to arming up and piracy, definitely expensive to get into - probably a minimum of 300k in credits to get set up with adequate weapons, systems, marines, etc. to have a chance of safely disabling and boarding another vessel and my target build will be closer to 400k (and that isn't even acquiring the best systems - just the ones I can realistically fix with my current engineer). It will be a while before I build up to this, but in-game missions do indeed require getting into this aspect of the game, so that is on the long-term to-do list as well. I just hope that other missions aren't held up by this.