Restarted a few times after getting to know the game. You can hinder your progress by letting your crew level too fast or having too many of them. You have to pay for them and as they level the both get more expensive and require more things to be happy. I've lost two pilots due to not having a shower when they hit level 3.

First good missions are going to be passengers, there are a few big payout ones right off and you'll have to fill your ship with five of the 2-seat passenger holds. Then I sell a few of them back and buy cargo holds to move more good around. Be sure to have one cargo hold from the get go.

Research is very important, See the aforementioned showers. What confused me here was how to research. The element icons are key, this is what you are researching, once you have all the elements for a room type it unlocks, and the same element will show up in other rooms as well. It's nice, but I think the tree is going to be played out very quickly.

Haven't done much combat yet, which is fine by me. Took a while to figure out I needed a crew (with skill), a turret mount, an ammo dump and ammo all to get the combat working. Else you get into the combat screen and your ship is just flying around with nothing to do except get hit and call them for negotiating.

I'm only still in the first system, so take what I say with a grain of salt. But I'm really liking so far.