Ostranauts Ship Flipping Guide

Salvage sells parts. Ship flipping sells whole hulls. Captains buy rights to a derelict, restore airtight powered systems, assign room types that multiply installed gear, tow the project home, and cash out at OKLG brokers for mid-game spikes that dwarf courier gigs. After 1.0 and Fire in the Hold, flips still work — but combat traffic and dockage mean you price risk and berth time into every project.

This build guide covers buy timing, legal/functional bonuses, room multipliers, towing braces, and common price myths. Pair with Fusion Torch Drive, Ship Building, and Ship Mortgage.

What actually raises sell price

Broker value leans on:

• Installed, powered equipment — loose crates on the floor rarely count
• Room designations with multipliers (engineering, luxury quarters, reactor rooms, towing rooms, and similar labels)
• Average condition of floors, walls, conduits, and parts
• Atmosphere-capable airtight hulls with breathable mixes (community notes flag large bonuses when powered and legal)
• Flight-legal avionics — nav console, transponder, antenna
• Distance to OKLG — towed closer usually sells better than deep boneyard listings

Power alone can jump quotes dramatically in community tests (six-figure swings when breakers flip on). Nitrogen balance matters too — mixes drifting far above comfortable N2 bands can crush the offer.

Walls and thrusters installed with centers inside walls historically contributed little; focus on recognized rooms and powered gear.

Ship expansion work that overlaps flip restoration habits

Buy, restore, sell loop

1. Survey a wreck you can seal. Strip only what you will reinstall or bank as parts.
2. Confirm purchase rights at the broker — derelict buy prices are assigned at spawn and no longer crater just because you gutted doors pre-purchase.
3. Ferry via PASS if your work hull cannot stay, or EVA with spare bottles.
4. Restore airtight envelope, power bus, O2/N2, scrubbers, and legal COMMS stack.
5. Paint rooms deliberately — one luxury quarters, one towing room, and strong reactor/engineering labels beat a maze of unlabeled corridors.
6. Install a towing brace, power it, and tow toward OKLG.
7. Dock, pay honest docking fees briefly, sell, undock.

Crew help: one hire can fly your personal ship while you sell the flip hull — see Hire Crew.

Towing brace essentials

Flips die when the project drifts beyond recovery. A powered towing brace on a prepared airlock face locks the derelict for Newtonian tows. Align surfaces, feed conduit, confirm the secure-dock cue, then burn gently. Full torch installs for long hauls belong on Fusion Torch Drive once remass allows.

Margin killers

• Long OKLG stays while finishing interiors — dockage eats profit
• Unpowered showroom ships that look finished but quote like scrap
• Unlabeled open plans with no room multipliers
• Combat intercepts on Ceres-adjacent flips — escort or wait for quiet traffic
• Forgetting salvage permits when you still strip neighbor wrecks mid-project

Flip versus other money loops

Loop	Capital	Time	Spike
Station gigs	Low	Short	Low
Licensed salvage	Medium	Medium	Steady
Ship flipping	Medium–high	Medium	High
Bulk trading	High (pods + fuel)	Travel	Route-dependent

Seed capital often comes from death investigations or salvage before the first buy-in around tens of thousands of dollars. Do not flip on day one with an unpaid mortgage and empty RCS.

Related pages

• Starter Careers — traits that help wrench work
• Bulk Trading — pods after you have a freighter
• How to Salvage — parts pipeline into flips
• Zones and Hauling — crew installs without idle freezes
• Builds hub — mortgage and torch paths