I've got the game on the Easiest setting possible.
What's the trick to winning this game? I've only played as a human so far, and as a trader or a pirate. Choosing pirate, the description implied a much better starting ship than I got. (I'm really sick of the Ranger ship.) As a pirate, I do not EVER hijack a ship, and I actively attack pirates, but when I visit a planet, they always carp at me about my pirate activities, which are NONE.

It doesn't matter how much money you pour into weapons, shields or targeting ability, the pirates are all insanely overpowered, just absurd and ridiculous. So, pirate hunting is OUT as a way to progress.....the very best you can ever do is get them to cough up a bribe and run away. What makes me most angry is I'm encountering pirates rated at speeds at least a third slower than my ship, but they EASILY outrun me, every single time, even after I've been using Boost on my engine!

Dominator fighting? Please. After maybe twenty years of experience and saving money, you might have a very tiny chance of fighting Dominators.
Game ruining, way too overpowered.

What irritates me the most is the insanely high price of hulls, and hull capacity. To even just-barely survive, you need every slot on board crammed with equipment, so that rules out trading or ore collecting as a realistic option. Fuel and repair costs eat up the tiny profits from any sort of trading anyway. Waste of time and effort. I should mention that I've never tried trading in weapons or drugs.

Perhaps the very-worst aspect of the game is that you have to scribble down on scap paper the commodity prices in Star Systems, as if the ship's computer could not function to remember that for you. Just obnoxious.

About fifty percent of the missions are Sucker Bets you can never hope to accomplish, often because Dominators have cut the spacelanes and you can't possibly get there on time. Experience points CRAWL in this game.

I know I should be using the News Reports to find opportunities, but it's just overwhelming, too much information, too far to travel, takes too much time and by the time you arrive, things have changed.

What I want is to start out with a ship of about 500 cargo capacity!

Edit: the solution appears to be to select a Freyan Corsair, and to evade pirates for as long as possible

I have only played Space Rangers 1 so far, but it is fairly similar so some of my advice will likely apply.

It seems you have already found that which Ranger you pick at the beginning has a lot of impact on the game. They each have different relations with the various alien races as well. In SR1 I found that the Moloq trader was fairly easy at the start because he has a decent size hull and is on good relations with all races.

Another good thing to do is to replace your starting equipment with similar items that don't take up a lot of space. For example, my Moloq trader started with some photon guns that took 50 space units. But when I flew through hyperspace and fought some pirates, they dropped a photon gun that only took 17 units of space. So I swapped them, to enjoy the extra cargo room.

I think that running government missions is probably the fastest way to make cash. if you do them early in the game, there's less of a chance of trade routes being blocked off by invasions. If you find yourself without any government missions, check the news for places to trade to, and then when you've made that run, look for government missions again. Try to have some way to make money whenever you travel anywhere. If there's no government missions and no good trade opportunities, just travel somewhere else and intentionally pick a fight with some of the hyperspace pirates so that you can grab an item or two to sell (hopefully hyperspace pirates are in the second game as well?).

Fighting the invaders yourself will be extremely difficult in the beginning, but you can kind of "mooch" off of areas where there are a lot of allies to help you fend them off. It might not hurt to try showing up to a system that's being invaded, let the military do most of the fighting, and then grab all the goods left behind.

Having said all that, it's still a very hard game. Hopefully these tips can help it be more fun though.

You might also check this other thread about Space Rangers 1 where people discussed strategies:

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/space_rangers/a_masochists_perspective_or_help_required/page1

Yeah, it's an rpg, so you start off quite weak and end off very strong. At the end of the game, my Human Merchant could take on dozens of Dominators at once and blow them all up. It takes time, patience, and lots and lots of money.

My suggestion would be to do missions at first. Some of the missions will be combat based, but they should be easier combats. That will earn you both money for better equipment and hulls and xp to make you more effective both in and out of combat.

It will take time. I will take avoiding most combat, but give it time and you will able to do exactly the things you claim can't be done.

No, the Feyan also quickly went broke and quickly was overwhelmed with multiple pirates who blew him up just like all the others.

Pirates are KILLING ME in this game, over and over and over and over. No matter how fast I make my ship, I can't outrun them, they are always in range and hitting me....even when the scanner shows that THEIR SHIP IS SLOWER!

There is never enough of anything. Never enough money. Never enough speed. Never enough range. Never enough cargo space. Never enough slots for equipment. The game is ruined by making it much too difficult. EASY setting should actually BE easy, so you can get a feel for the game.

I don't find getting killed and having to start all over again is "challenging", "fun", "educational" or anything else even remotely good.

Frustration does not equal fun. I live on big juicy hunks of meaty REWARD to keep me interested. Punishment makes me HATE, and Gog games are PUNISHING.

Build me an interactive tutorial, and let me learn in the sandbox. Don't make me load the game twenty times in a row.

It's a bit harsh to judge all GOG games based on this one. There are plenty of games on GOG that are a lot easier.

It seems you are finding the game more frustrating than most players do. Some hints that may make the game less frustrating:

1) Ship speed is also dependent on mass. If your ship is heavy, you will move slower, even if you have a fast engine. Keep that in mind when you load your ship up with equipment... always go for the lightest stuff you can find. Sometimes it's not a good idea to upgrade if the new component is really heavy... trading a 17-mass photon gun for a 70-mass zip gun is probably not worth it (these are weapons from SR1... there might be different ones in the second game but the general principle is the same).

2) Early on, you will not be able to win fights. To be able to fight better, you will need to upgrade your ship and equipment, and to do that you need money. The easiest way to make money early in the game is to do government missions. Do as many as you can.

3) If you cant' find government missions, then you should either do some trading (check the news for where to take your goods) or fight some pirates in the arcade hyperspace game, as they will drop items for you. Sometimes you will want to keep these items, sometimes you will want to sell them. You will make less money doing these things, but at least you'll get some, and you'll end up somewhere else where they might have some government missions for you to do.

4) When you do have to fight, remember that combat is always easier if you have friendly guys on your side. If you're getting attacked by pirates, ask friendly ships for help. You may be able to fight the pirate off or at least distract him so you can land somewhere and repair.

5) Same goes for fighting Dominators... look for systems that are being defended by military ships and then help the military out. That should even the odds a little... in fact the military ships will be much better than you at the beginning of the game, but you can still show up and take all the delicious loot that the Dominators drop, even if you didn't kill any yourself.

If you try these things and still find the game to be too frustrating, then perhaps it isn't the game for you. You should still check out the rest of the catalog at GOG though as there is a huge variety of games available and I'm sure you'll find something you like better.

Jesus... cry moar.

Just do the missions - they pay well and you know it makes sense.