In the old version you could make decent money doing trading missions and the like.
Now there are no trading missions, instead Sindra and other planets have huge needs of resources.
I just spent most of the early game buying drugs from Tri-tech and selling them to whatever planet wanted them the most, usually at 3x or 4x the price. With 1000 cargo space you will be buying 150k worth of drugs, sell them for 300 - 400k without much trouble.
Then when I got to having a cargo hold space of 2000+ I can find cheap X and sell it to a planet that needs it usually for 10 times the price I bought it at. 1 dollar ore, sell it for 13 bucks each. Sure cargo capacity kinda limits you but not really. The lower supply use is a major factor to why this is so strong. I think I pay something like 2 supplies a day for 2000 cargo space thanks to two new skills. Always buy lobster when I am in the system too, and I am there a lot due to Sindra always being low on something it seems.
As usual I started a colony ASAP, I did this in the last version too, but now I don't need my fleet to defend it, before any raids start happening I already managed to get a space station and patrol HQ which so far have been enough. I got them by abusing waystation.
How to get rich using a colony:
Build a waystation, go sell supplies, fuel and crew to whatever planets offer more than their base prices. I carry off 2000 supllies for 100 bucks each and sell them for around 150. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum. If your colony is close to the core worlds you can be raking in a lot of money this way.
I feel no need to do combat or explore as I can just keep making infinite amounts of money as my colony grows larger and larger and generates more money for me and I spend all my extra cash on more cargo space for my fleet. I currently have 0 weapons mounted on my entire fleet and just run with a bunch of frigates modified for max cargo space / burnspeed.
BTW I found some new items, no idea how to use them but they seem cool.
Overall I like the new patch / changes but the game seems a lot easier. Maybe cause I am used to playing with mods that make the game harder and don't have them currently due to them not being updated for the new version that I am finding it a bit easier.
Also kudos to the AI changes, I am no longer invincable taking out entire fleets of frigates using 1 cruiser, they now surround me quite well and kill my Cruiser.
This is just my initial early game trading / smuggling observations. I have gotten my fleet wiped like 5 times now but still make so much money with 0 effort unlike the previous version.
My character is lvl 10 which I guess would be considered midgame normally with the new patch but I editted the max level to 40 in the config file so I was still considering it early game. Size 5 colony that so far has been untouchable to raids sent against it without me helping out.
One thing I kinda don't like is how the story point cost for colony upgrades doubles each time and once you spend them on the colony there is no way to get them back. I kinda messed up and spent them on the first 4 buildings i made on my colony and now there is pretty much no way I am ever gonna stockpile up 16 story points when there is so much to do with them.
Anyways I am gonna focus on actual combat missions and exploration now and see how that is, but currently the colony stuff is too easy, in the last version it was a bit annoying but pretty similar, the worst thing in the last version was how slow colonies grew but now they seem to grow at a reasonable pace. I am not sure how you can really fix the way station thing, I did it much less in the last version cause cargo space, supply costs, and resource stockpiles were a bit harder to get / do but now it seems like a braindead way to make tons of money.
Kinda ranty, it's late, might edit this to make more sense tomorrow.