View source for Talk:Trader/@comment-37104439-20181009190952

OK, I've now figured it out, I'm now finally at Elite for trade, and I was wrong in my previous post - please ignore it. 

Your trade rank is indeed increased by the profit you make in either trade or passenger runs, BUT any trading profit you make from MISSIONS is NOT included in your wright hand systems panel under Statitics, but it DOES count towards your rank progress. Passenger runs of course are ONLY available as missions, and the same applies for these. 

Hence why it is possible to rank up to Elite despite showing very little profit under your statistics.

Ths small amount of profit that my statistics panel shows me has been derived from the small profits I have gained when filling the rest of my cargo hold to capacity with various goods, after first loading what I specifically need to complete my trade missions. 

The VAST majority of profit I gained to gain my rank was from trading and passenger missions - LOTS of them! 

Finally, I spent several days while trying to gain my rank acceptig mission rewards that partly paid out with high grade materials, until I realised why my rank was increasing so slowly. As soon as I reverted back to accepting only cash rewards (around 5 million per mission, and stacked to 4 or 5 missions per run) then my rank shot up at about 3% per run. 

Finally got access to Jamieson's Memorial, and immeadiately got shot to death almost straight away by a very aggressive human pilot shooting some kind of weird green sh#te at me that kept causing my scanner to loose lock - I think I've traced it to a plasma accelerator with an experimental effect. Cost me 25m to rebuy! Thanks cipher9732154608! Would have just had him too, if his mate hadn't turned up towards the end. He obviously couldn't handle me on on one. I'll be back for a rematch soon though, and I'll probably bring a mate! ;)

I LOVE this game!