Started with 50K, thx to quests now I have 3K and for a new player, there is literally no way to make your money back maybe in a week because of contracts… is there any way to navigate the mechanics of the game and make some money without losing it at the beginning?
I’m a few days in myself and have made the same mistake once or twice. You’ve got to be careful with the cost/benefit analysis of contracts, especially the fuel costs involved in travel (and if you have enough of the right currency to buy fuel at the destination!). Spreadsheets are your friend. Most local market buy contracts give you less profit than selling at the Commodity Exchange so ignore them.
Your best bet at the start is to focus on your starter production and sell that. I presume you followed the tutorials and built your starter colony? That’ll tick you over with a bit of income and you can slowly expand from there.
Only pick contracts that augment this e.g transport in a direction you were going anyway.
Maybe the biggest point is that your personal time is a resource. This is a game I know I can set and leave for a day or so and it’s often financially prudent to leave your workers longer to generate more products to sell/ spend less on fuel.
I would also point out, in addition to only prioritizing contracts that already lean into what you are doing/ where you are going to- you want to be as efficient as possible with every movement of your ships. This isn’t just moving a truck to another country- you are moving entire solar systems using two different kinds of fuel- it requires fuel just for people to be able to MAKE fuel- so even if it’s relatively cheap it’s only because if it weren’t EVERYTHING would be too expensive. It also helps that you can vary how fast you reach a destination, so you can take longer for less cost if you have the time to spare. Slowing down cuts down transport costs BY A LOT.
TLDR: you know how some people make out business majors to be excessively focused on squeezing the most money out of every process? Be that unironically for fuel use, and it will help you starting off. It’s when you start getting into a more stable financial situation you can be more loosey goosey with the handling of transport and quests.