Jackets And When To Stop?

I have been grinding jackets for quite sometime and i would like to know when i should stop and switch to a crime that's good for money such as hacking and how many jackets i should steal before i start doing such crimes and which ones make the most money

One question you might want to ask yourself is if you want to switch to hacking crimes. Hacking crimes will stunt your CE growth, and there are upsides (the money) and downsides (the stunted growth).

If you do want to pursue hacking crimes, it's generally accepted that you can do them around 35 NNB and maintain that level of CE if you weave some arsons in between jails. You will want to switch to another safe crime that gives more experience before then though to reach 35 NNB faster. A common approach used to be stealing jackets into thorough robbery into stealh virus into arson, but recently there's been debate about whether thorough robbery/steal virus are needed. Personally I had a hard time finding any stealh virus successes around 25 NNB and switched straight into arsons.

Here is a guide on how to advance your NNB as quickly as possible, bearing in mind what I said before about stealth virus/thorough robbery.
Here is a guide called 'The Sweet Spot' which further talks about crimes you can do at 35 NNB in order to break even on your CE, enabling you to pursue drug merits or a revenue stream through hacking.

It's also worth mentioning that you can make (admittedly much less) money from safe crimes. Arsons pull in ~10k each success which sounds like nothing but does add up over time. Kidnapping the mayor is another safe crime which nets you 75k-100k per success. Keep in mind that if you do this crime you need to always carry at least 75k on hand to avoid jailings. While the money is much less, the obvious benefit is that it doesn't stunt your CE growth, but there is certainly a strong argument for holding off on your CE growth so you can set yourself up financially by maxing your bank and investing in stock BBs for passive income.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

If I understand it correctly, your question has 2 parts: when to stop jacket crime, and what crime to change to.

1. When do you stop, or rather, why do people do jacket crime? It is either because they are new and trying to build up their CE so they can do harder crimes, or they are workin on the theft merit (1k, 2.5k, 5k and 10k). Theft merits can be achieved easier and faster working on theft crime rather than robbery (safer, less nerve consumption). So when to stop comes to if you’re bored of it already, or if you have already got all the theft merits.

2. What crime to change to: it depends on your game style and what you want to achieve ultimately. I myself will be going into hacking crime but it’s because I’d like to get the merit. Different people think differently and everyone has their own goal so I won’t criticise anyone.

However, I think your approach is a bit lacking when you think that hacking crime can earn a lot of money. Yes it can, but only if you make adequate preparation in advance (education, merit, jobs, boosters, etc.). The details can be found in the Tutotrial subforum.

Last but not least, looking at your level and age, I’d say you should concentrate on building up your battle stats and leveling up first. Running plushie and flowers can also earns you 5m a day with much less effort.

There is no merit associated with hacking crime. Edit: Hacking crimes are computer crimes.

Theft merits end at 25k.

If you reach 60 nnb doing safe crimes you can potentially make average 40 million a week with faction OC. Better than any crime.

Hacking crimes count as Computer crimes

With hacking you can make 4-5 million daily.

It's little less than oc true, but it doesn't require years of Arson grind.

Also they DO count as computer crimes i believe?

Is there none? Is it not counted in the computer crime? Well, I haven’t actually started (still in preparation progress) so it’s all good. At least once I’m done with the prep then I can do any other crime (e.g. drugs). But thanks for the pointer!

It is counted as a computer crime.

Then there should be merits for doing it, just like theft crime... Not sure why ArttiIsGod said there was none?

Just a mistake, we all make them :)

I've been interested in getting other's feedback on this as well. I have 2 crime guides saved and what i'm hearing is the benefit of raising nnb as fast as possible will help a lot with OC's in faction and crime income.

They count as computer crimes, but so do the virus crimes. And the virus crimes can be done without killing your CE. The hacking crimes can not.

There is no need to do hacking crimes "to get the merit".

I was wondering the same thing, and the approach I settled on was to stop at 7500.

There is a merit for 7500 theft crimes and I'm on 30NNB so stealth virus has good success rate.
My plan now is to raise NNB as fast as possible, then go back for merits when I can do more crimes at a time and have less regen loss.
I don't see crimes as a money maker, I make much more from flying, so to me they are just the merits.