I'm only a few hours into the game and here is my take on what it is like getting into it:

First, this game has an incredible flow to it. It is one of the most accessible games to memory that I have played. You can't "lose" and death is inconsequential. The only progression is forward. A failed story mission just instantly resets without a loading screen as far as I can tell. I've never failed a side quest but they are all quite inconsequential anyhow so it wouldn't matter either way. You're constantly rushing about the galaxy at warp speed (in which you can steer, which is quite original and cool for a game about space ships), never a dull moment, there are violent encounters and secrets to run into every 30 seconds. Mission locations are always just a minute away from where you accepted the job.

As for real advice, I'd say the starting ship is very good and I'm still using it some 5 hours into the story. All weapons at this point in the game have one cheap and one expensive alternative so it is very easy to experiment. Your main focus weapons wise is the two turret slots and the broadsides. Most fights involve swarms of fighters and capital ships. Your turrets can make short work of the fighters, especially if you automate your turrets, while your broadside cannons can punch through the capital sized ships. This means maneuvering up side by side with the target ship and focusing all your efforts on staying in relative position and pounding them with aimed shots. The starter ship is very fast and maneuverable to get in position to fire broadsides and with maxed out defensive modules it can easily take the combined fire of tens of ships. Beam weapons are cool looking but at this point in the game just about any combination seems to work well enough. I automate my turrets so that I can focus on maneuvering and avoid crashing into things. Combat boils down to stripping the shields, destroying their armour and then start reducing their health bars. The game clearly states which weapons are better or worse at these tasks.

I haven't really looked into trading, I'm making all my money from taking on missions from the job boards in space stations. The trading model is quite simple, different stations have different stocks and different sell and buy prices. There are some indications on the trade screen where good deals can be made and you can get even more clues by reading the news or asking the bartender. I guess this information may be somewhat delayed because I've found that hacking objects in space can sometimes provide you with even more up to date information on sell prices, or so the game tells me. It is probably a decent trading game but it hasn't caught my interest this early on while still in the starter system.

Have fun, space trucker!

Trading in this game is better than Freelancer which isn't difficult as it was very simplistic and prices hardly fluctuated and it was a static economy - you could do the same route over and over again ad infinitum - not here though. The game seems to remember the stock prices of various goods for all the stations you have traveled too, which is excellent. For example to get a start on trading, go to the commodities screen, any item name listed in red you should avoid at the start (unless you want to be a pirate) as they are illegal goods. Buy items with red prices (not red names) and sell at green prices. Check the system news as well for certain situations like Market Glut (items will be super cheap) or Tech Booms at certain stations. Before buying anything highlight a suitable cheap commodity and look to the lower right - it will show the various prices this item is selling at the last stations you have been at, so you can get the best deal. Be aware that if you keep doing the same run a few times eventually (quite soon usually) the run loses it's profitability and prices will bottom out forcing you to look to the next best trade in different goods, which keeps it fairly fun. I like this.

Hope this helps.

Tony.

There is a LOT of detail you can pump into the game and depending on how you play, it can become a slow paced grind. So my advice is just based on the mistakes I made:

1) If you cannot find yourself to be able to upgrade your ship or even buy a new one, DO push forward the story missions as much as you can. Eventually you will be able to acquire side missions that grant you much more money. So if you find yourself playing dozens of side missions before you can buy new equipment, that would be a good point to proceed with the story.

2) Just upgrading a single weapon sometimes reduces the difficulty level (as displayed in your mission log). So sometimes it may be better to just upgrade weapons, shields, hull, etc before considering buying a new ship. A new ship can easily be inferior if not properly equipped (as you become more or less a sitting duck).

3) The difficulty levels of missions as displayed in your log are not AS reliable. While at the beginning I had issues completing even Medium staged missions, further down the road I could easily complete missions with level High which - of course got a bigger reward for me.

4) Check which mission types suit you best. While there is an endless supply of missions, many follow the same scheme. Tho even if a mission gives you much money, if you bring your ship close to destruction, you should consider possible repair costs. So a mission that gives you just 150000 credits may be worth more then one with 180000. And yes, later on repair costs can easily take a 40000 credit cut out of your budget if you get beaten up enough. Especially repair of advanced hull plating is expensive.

In the end, don't try to play the game on a beaten path. I never joined a faction nor did I get into trading. I sold whatever I looted if the selling price was not marked in red (which means you have a bad deal). The rest of the gameplay was just blowing stuff up and that was good enough for me. :)

I found a trading is sometimes really worth it especially in combination with events.
But all depends on your local system and events.

For example i have two stations close to each other, one is militaristic and got the Market Glut Event 9 huge stock of goods. And that other station close by got WAR event, so i was supplying munitions from the one to the other, for clear profit of 20000 per trip, and one trip took about 2 minutes.

Also there are sometimes rare commodities that can get difference like 10000 credits per unit.

And Mining is also interesting. If you get mining laser and fault tracker equipment and found yourself nice ice field all resources dropped from those will net you several thousand credits per unit (Pure Water and Tachyon Salt).
Ans as a boost Mining Laser is quite decent turret.

any suggestions on combat as

When doing the first story mission you get a distress signal. tried to help but died every single time

second mission I died to fighters as well.

Run away. Combat is bad until you have mk2 armor, shields and weapons. You need money to do that. Take the mining laser and teleporter and mine ice fields for water, diamonds and other valuable stuff. Buy a bigger ship then do the storyline. For advance gamers you can mine large asteroids for face of Gozu loot. You have to read up on how to finds them. There are 12 worth at least 50k early on. This enables you to get a tennhausen ship and mk2 kit which is good enough for the first system.

The best tip I know of to make money is doing missions and being VERY attentive to what the mission statement says to complete the mission and only do exactly that. For example the best money making missions are dead drops from the Merchant Guild. On these missions there usually spawn a crapload of enemies but if you read the mission description all you have to do is get that dead drop and return it. So get a fast ship, good engine, good booster (The one with the longest burn time is what I prefer.) and just swoop in, get the dead drop and swoop out again leaving the enemies far behind.

It's a equipment based game. So if my memory serves me right the first two or three missions should be doable with the cash you have at the beginning. Just make sure you get a turret or two because they help greatly against fighters and capital ships in the beginning. Fill your ship with equipment first, cheap equipment, and then do easy missions while upgrading your equipment one step at a time piece by piece with defences first.

If you have problems with fighters particle laser turrets and HS missile launcher are your friends. You'll be needing range and ability to actually hit the fighters to not get swarmed. Ignore the other weapons against fighter swarms because they either can't hit them or are too short ranged so when they do start to hurt the fighters you'll already be swarmed and in trouble.
Always lure out fighter swarms and deal with them before you go after the capital ships.

Edit: Wait first story mission and a distress signal? I don't remember that being the first story mission?

Edit 2: Well Swarm Turrets are good against fighter swarms too. Problem is they run out of ammunition after a fighter swarm or two so I don't use them.

In the very first missions story missions and cargo missions are best shot.
As game starts you can buy second turret.
Flak secondary should help with torpedoes spam.
As for turrets: mining laser, particle laser, and phase canon work fine.

Most profitable seems to be transport mission, and drop cache. Since you dont need to fight in them. But it could get boring in long run.

one way of making money early on is to explore each nebula/asteroid field as well as debris fields (you generally cant see the last on the map visually)

each will net you a small discovery bonus (so far for me its always been 2 digit payout) which will add up since there are tons of these to discover

side note: you may also find one of the special asteroid fields that drop faces of gozu/antimatter specks/Progenitor Shards which all have high sell values

also keep track of the news for events korian invasion affects the prices on the station until the invasion craft arrive for example

Distress signals usually occur semi-randomly during travel. If you respond to one, and things seem a little too heavy for you (early on, "threat level: red" encounters will probably be too difficult), just boost away from the attackers until your ship will let you warp.

One thing I have never seen anyone comment on is detailed map scanning.

First, the "feature zone". The map features (asteroid belts, nebulae, debris fields, etc) of each system do not cover the entire system. They are within a roughly square zone that is superimposed WITHIN the outermost orbit. Occasionally there may be one or two outlying nebulae at the corners of the zone that fall just beyond the outer orbit, but for the most part the interesting stuff is found in a square area that fits within the circle of that orbit.

This means that often the outermost 1 to 3 stations are in some otherwise pretty empty parts of the map.

It also means that there is no need to waste time exploring the vastness beyond the outer orbit,...or even in the upper, lower, left, and right arcs of that orbit. Trust me...I have already wasted that time on your behalf.

If you are trying to use the zoomed in map to visually explaore some area around you, one of the best resolutions to use is to zoom ALL THE WAY DOWN, then BACK OFF 2 DETENTS. Alternatively stated, zoom in then back off to the first scale where tihe map switches back to top-down view, rather than the low oblique that is used at full zoom.

When you successfully find that scale, you can see ALL of the various clouds, debris fields, asteroid belts, etc, as you scroll around. If you zoom out more you lose some of the smaller formations. Also, at less magnification debris fields, which are grey on black and difficult to see in any case, become effectively invisible. At closer scales, you are too close to cover much ground with your map recon, and your field of view is more limited due to the low oblique perspective, and sometimes the clouds, etc, actually get in the way.

At this zoom level / scale, one screen width is ~250sm wide. That is quite a convienient swath to use for thoroughtly exploring a portion of the map. I scroll directly down the map from my current position 2-3,000 sm and place a waypoint. I note the clouds, etc, in zone while scrolling. There are usually 4 to 8 in that kind of swath. Then I fly from feature to feature down the map, sometimes mining as I go, and reorienting on the distant waypoint as I leave each feature to stay in the current exploration zone. This makes sure that all the namable features along that path get noted onto the map.

In regard to exploring map features, when you fly throught the center of a nebula or asteroid belt for the first time, the game system marks your map with a dot at the location. Mousing over the dot at any map scale shows the name of the "terrain feature". Very convenient for finding and getting back to places you want to mine again, or where you dumped a slightly less valuable cargo to pick up those diamonds.

However, it is worth noting that the game does NOT name/mark EVERY map feature that you can explore. There are two classes of "feature volumes" that it will not mark for you. Knowing about them may save you some exploring time in the first case, and in the second case, it can help make you very, very rich.

1) There are a number of dense orange gas clouds, and also some dense white gas clouds, which have no items of value within them. Sometimes they have a few apparently cosmetic bits of gas mining gear or small abandoned platforms, but none of it is useful, useable, or even destructible. These types of clouds never get anmed an marked no matter how many times and directions you fly throught them. So don't waste too much exploring time on them. The ones that never get named are generally modest in size, and not visible when you are zoomed out enough to see 2-3 orbit tracks. The annoying twist is that they are quite visible and distinct when you ar flying around exploring.

MILD CAUTION: There are some similar looking nebulae that DO get named when explored. These usually either have an asteroid belt or small debris firld within them, or they are very large map features, good for reference at the smaller scales (more zoomed out; EXMPL: small scale - 1:1,000,000; large scale - 1:1,000. Lotsa folks get that backwards.).

2) <SPOILER ALERT - IF YOU REALLY WANT TO DISCOVER ALL THE SECRETS OF THE SECTOR WITHOUT HINTS, DO NOT READ THE NEXT FOUR PARAGRAPHS. IF YOU ARE OK WITH KNOWING THAT GOOD STUFF EXISTS, BUT DON'T WANT TIPS ON FINDING IT, READ THE FIRST THREE PARAs BELOW BUT NOT THE LAST.>

There are two rare types of tiny nebulae that never get name but they are VERY IMPORTANT. The two most valuable mineable products in the game are available there in significant quantities. ("Significant" = one mining haul = 1 to 2M credits).

If you find a small asteroid field in a small nebula, that yields either a LOT of Faces of Gozu, or several Antimatter Specks, stop and look at the map. Take careful note of what marked features and/or stations are nearby, and in what directions. You will have to use those landmarks to find this place again, because the game will not name the belt/nebula, nor will it mark the map with a dot here.

You will likely mine out either of these two types of field when you first find it. However, the resources of every system are reseeded each time that you return to the system after leaving. So you are going to want to stop by for some fast, cheap, easy money any time that your adventures bring you back to the system where you made the find.

<DEEPER SPOILER ALERT>

Oh, BTW. The Face field is always a small pale blue-green (almost whate) nebula, with a dozen really gigantic tetrahidrite blocks. The A-M Speck field is always in a tiny, very deep deep blue cloud (almost black), with a small number of really gigantic obsidian asteroids (3, that I've ever seen, but I've heard that sometimes more.)

Several people have talked about basic and early techniques and equipment for dealing with fighter swarms.

I'd like to add two things that I haven't seen mentions in this thread.

1) ALWAYS hire a wingman as soon as you can afford it. This may be the single highest impact step for reducing the fighter pressure on your ship. The wingmen are quite good at drawing off, and eventually defeating (usually) some of the fighters. They are also quite durable, and therefore cost effective, as well.

Just remember that your wingman always gets repaired to 100% when you stop at a station - for free. Keep a eye on her/his ship condition (little display, just left of the upper edge of your radar screen.) Sometimes swinging in to make a pit stop for wingman repairs is the single most important reason to make a port call.

2) Broadside weapons. ALL broadside weapons can hit and kill fighters. They aren't as efficient at it as many of the turret weapons, especially lasers, but a couple of solid hits from the broadside battery will pretty much do for almost any fighter, and may be some much needed assistance for your turret weapons at punching out those tougher gunships (pesky Korians!) Broadsides have excellent anti-fighter range compared to many of the turret weapons, but a last second radical maneuver by a fighter at range will generate a miss. Oh, well. Shoot again, broadside "bullets" are all free.

To have a decent chance with broadsides against fighter class the broadside array must be allowed to FULLY Charge (which is really an aiming function), and maybe even a moment or two more. Also, you need to try to position the yellow aiming swath to cover a fighter, or two or three.

The best broadside anti-fighter tactical positioning is to be running from the fighter swarm at an oblique angle, with you broadside guns cranked around as far aft as they will go, firing at the outer edges of the fighter stream trying to catch you. The fighters behind you have to be coming straight into that fire in order to chase/shoot at you. Whenever you get a warning on shields, switch the ship over "to the other tack", bringing the other broadside to bear on the other edge of the fighter swarm trying to close behind you.

The other situation that is particularly good for broadside engagement is any fighter that is making a firing run at your ship. Turn a little so that the fighter on attack run is flying directly into your broadside aim swath. Korian Shizos and Lancers in particular like to do this.

Only 30 to 50% of broadside anti-fighter shots will hit, even when you get pretty good at it. A single broadside hit will rarely outright kill a fighter. But a single hit will generally strip a fighter of shield an armor, making it meat for a wingman, a turret gun of any kind (but especially particle lasers), or a 2nd broadise hit. It all adds up pretty quickly, once you get the rythm.

I tend to forget about wingmen (Mercenary.) because when you start to meet destroyers or are in one yourself they're pretty much useless because they die too fast. But yeah a wingman makes a big difference the first couple MK levels.

Regarding Mercenaries/Gunships and fighter swarms you haven't seen anything unless you've done the pirate missions where you're targeting merchant convoys at MK5 or MK6. In a expensive ship. They're the fucking hardest battles and missions in the game.
There are the dead drops and blockade breaker missions with lots of swarms but the merchant convoy ones are batshit insane. Range, lasers and running the fuck away a lot are the name of the game with those. Mercenaries as enemies are definitely not fun...

I use the flak and spam its button while I fire to the main ships with my main guns. I really don't know if it's efficient, but I never had problem with fighters. Yes I always bring a merco with me.