Advancement in rank has nothing to do with the amount of credits to your name. It is related to the number of missions you complete and ships destroyed. The only way to earn a lot of credits is to haggle on the trade-net. By staying in the space station on the net, and trading in guns, food and gold, you will quickly build a fortune. Traveling to space stations requires you to jump until you cannot get any further.

Load the game. Enter the net. Type "help", and get yourself an id number. Log off from the net. Press the "backspace" key at the bay doors. Blast off into space, and find a spaceship for you to trade with and get his id number.

Enter the net, logon, and press 'T' and 'Return'. You should be now in communication mode with the alien. Say "hello", have a chat, keep pressing a key or whatever until he offers you some goods, such as Hypermint for example.

At the prompt, right after he has offered you something to buy, enter '1' (without quotes) and press 'Return'. He'll say something like "no chance", or "sign off". Log off.

Now everything you BUY or SELL, you'll BUY or SELL it for 1 credit, even if you put 100 credits as an offer, you'll still BUY or SELL it for 1 credit. This only applies to BLACK MARKET trading, it'll not work at a planet or space station.

Try it! Press 'T' and 'Return' to talk to the alien again. Say "hello", keep pressing a key until he offers YOU something (e.g. "Eh Guvnor, I have some business, do you want to buy some excellent Bath towels? I couldn't let them go for less than 1100 credits, what do you say?"

He'll now say something like "You have been done mate" or "Thanks, bye". Look at your inventory, and at the end you will see "TOWELS". Now check your credits, and you will see that you have 149 credits left.

Now here's the clincher, how to get rich quickly using the above method. Press 'T' and 'Return' to talk to the alien again. Now keep at him until he offers you something (e.g. "Listen, I'm a businessmen and I have got some Exquatle Hypermint that I couldn't let got for less than 2000 credits? Make me an offer."

You can take advantage of a bug in the program. Be certain you've got something to sell before doing this. Enter a large number, larger than the offer above, say "200,000" and press 'Return'. He will say, you have insufficient funds, and log off.

Now when you BUY or SELL anything, you will be buying or selling it for 200,000 credits. It is like a counter, that the programmers forgot to reset so that you can make it equal to anything.

Now, press 'T' and 'Return', to talk to the alien. Keep pestering him, until he says something like, "Have you got anything to trade". Tell him what you have got, say "BATH TOWELS" for example. Now he says something like, "name your price". Enter '10' and press 'Return'. It doesn't matter what you enter, as it is set at 200,000 anyway. Now log off and check your credits, you should have something like 200,149 credits. Wow, go splash out on all those new weapons and stuff.

But don't forget, if you want to buy anything from him, you must go through the first routine, to set the counter back to 1 credit. That routine is only used in BUYING, as it would defeat your purposes for you to buy something for 200,000 credits, eh? For the same reason, the bottom routine is only used for SELLING.