P2 Cargo Bug Offers Infinite Wealth

It's not every day that someone discovers a new trick to a 15 year old game, but the very clever Lin Kuei Ominae has found a bug that allows players to quickly amass unlimited credits. All of the built-in cheats relate to space combat, so this is pretty neat. Of course, his comprehensive save game editor allows tons of instant tweaks, but there's a certain charm to finding something like this in the game itself. Check out his instructions below. The screenshots are in German, which are worth peeking at if you've only played the English version. It doesn't affect the basic steps being demonstrated either.

1. Take a freighter and buy one ton of something cheap such as Brikcrete (just to occupy the first cargo pod).
2. Then buy several hundred tons of a cheap commodity like Grain.
3. Now sell the one ton from the first cargo pod and empty it this way.
4. Now go to the Bulletin Board and hire a different Freighter.
5. Go back to the commodities and you see that now the first cargo pod is filled.
6. If you now buy one ton of something expensive, the second pod (which was previously filled with many tons of cheap Grain) is now fill with several hundred tons of the expensive commodity.

When hiring a new freighter, the game reorganizes the cargo pods by moving full pods up into empty pods. However it doesn't set the amount of cargo stored in the pod back to zero and only assigns "Null" for the stored commodity type. So basically you still have hundred tons of nothing stored. When you now buy something, the cargo type is changed from "nothing" to the new commodity and the amount of tons is adjusted by one. I've attached some pictures showing the five steps.