So what is your favorite ships?

For me it is Tennhausen, it comes so early, and is cheap, has great broadside slots for the cost, has decent speed and impresive cargo hold in addition to everything. Ship which stays for long.

There is also Sturvile from Mercenary guild, which is like Tennhausen but with one more turret and faster. General upgrade.

For boss fight i switch to Vanguard/Acturius since more guns is what we need.

Minotaur is great fun, but it is overkill for story mode.

As a trader/pirate hunter, my favourite would have to be McKinley as it has a huge hold, lots of broadsides and speed isn't a problem. The only real downside is it's cost which means you have to get it later on in the game.

Well after several playthroughs I tend to streamline my ships for profit until I can get to a Destroyer in MK5 equipment so that affects my personal favourites.

Alright here goes.

Icarus.
I usually get my Hammerhead up to MK2 in everything standard then go for a Icarus. Its got crap turret positions for fighters but have a medium hull which makes a huge difference in the early game, is very fast, maneuverable and works decently against capitals.
I tend to fly this for a long time because its speed and medium hull makes it great for dead drops missions. Doesn't even have to change to a bigger ship for story missions for a while either.

Hellion.
The same applies as for the Icarus except it got great turret placement with two on top and two under. I like it better than the Icarus. It's a great ship if handled right.
Of course it's Pirate only but that ain't much of a problem. Just get some cargo that's not the cheapest wares, fly up to a pirate base with a hailable ship near, surrender your cargo to the pirate ship and the pirate base will be friendly too. Just dock and buy the ship.

Barracuda.
It's a straight up improvement. Dead drops all day again.

Now when I'm starting to have a couple millions I have two choices. Go warlike or continue farming dead drops. If I want to continue farming credits I keep updating my Barracudas equipment to get better payed missions or I'll go destroyer and start blasting stuff for fun. If so it's the Arcturus or the Manticore.
The Arcturus is a great brawler and the Manticore is a turret weapons platform. Get a Leech Rocket, a couple particle lasers and a couple pulse turrets, fill it with turret enhancing subsystems and you're good to go kiting around the enemy. :)

Necroing this because I just finished the main campaign (at least I think I have - it was surprisingly short) with a Barracuda and Mk4-5 equipment. Is there any point farming for a bigger ship now? Do I get to unlock more\harder missions types if I get a destroyer or something?

Nope. If you finished the main campaign with a barracuda there isn't really any need to get another ship. Its just a sandbox now.

Thank you.

It's a shame there isn't more content, the game ain't bad at all, but it feels like a shorter and simplified pseudo-2d version of Freelancer. Maybe I'll pick it up again one day, but I think I've done enough grinding for now.

Necroing because I can. I recently bought a blackgate for the first time. man, this ting is HUGE. It collides on every freaking thing in space and loses all momentum. My go-to cargo run + guild drop very high risk missions are taking FOREVER to get away. I may just go back to my tennhausen since it has a LOT better profile for zooming by while still having a good punch.

Well the difficulty scales with your ship and equipment worth so it will keep being challenging. But otherwise the content doesn't change no. Unless you want to go full pirate or change your faction standing in other ways.

The Polaris, you never can be wrong with a ship that have a face and hands. (lock on it from forward to see about what I'm peaking).

Can not be unseen...

For me so far, it's been the Scarab. 7 turrets loaded with pulse + extenders/accelreator meant death from afar for all but the largest ships.

The Radovich replaced it with superior speed, capable of taking on high value merchant missions and building up ton's of $$. With pulse cannons + neutronbeams, it's rare I have trouble with capitol ships.

Considering the polaris next since i'm building up $$ pretty quick now.

id say mine was the Tennhausen also. At that point it was capable of handling any of the starting area ships even the commandships/pirate frigates, etc. With its broadsides and 4 mk2 mining lasers, both fighters and enemy ships of all types fell like wheat. Amazingly good how nice the heavy mining lasers are. They can handle the small fighters just as well as the other turrets that ONLY handle small fighters, plus they can focus on heavy ships and just by themselves can wipe out the corvette enemy ships, and teamed up with your broadsides can easily handle the enemy heavier ships.

Now, after that the Sturville looks very nice, but the scarab also nice, less broadsides, but up 3 more heavy mining lasers for very nice focus power for those who like to just drive up behind an enemy command ship and shoot them in the butt. Me, i like to get broadside and blast with broadsides/mining lasers for super fast kills.

Hellion > to > Sturville.

Really, they are both extremely well balanced (well, except for the limited Secondary ports on Hellion), and anything more quickly becomes a) expensive to equip, and b) overkill.

Now, I admit that last evaluation is after accumulating 2000+ hours in game, but an L5 Sturville, carefully handled, can deal with any situation in the game. A blended L5/6 Sturville is, not "easy-peasy", but "comfortable". Except late system Greel Dreadnaughts in pairs or threes - always gotta be careful with them.