Played a bit. Died horribly and starved to death first 4 or 5 attempts, but I have a game where I am at least surviving for now. Got two wolfs and a hound, and a good 30k in the bank, with ~100 extra supplies or so. Not really comfortable, but not in a death spiral yet either.
A couple things I think help out a bit.
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Combat-wise, Starting with the wolf, I find unloading 2-4 harpoons at point blank range is obscenely effective, even if they have shields up. If they lose shields first, better. At point blank range, they can't dodge, use Point defence, or anything, and it costs you zero flux, but they take a chunk of damage. It can easily be enough to push them to overload, which tends to result in victory. It can easily turn a 2v1 or 3v1 into something more manageable.
That Annilator rocket pods are similarly effective, but are designed for the role. They don't home, but with enemy point defence and dodging, harpoons are not that reliable at range either. At point blank range, its similar in effect, but you get 10 vollys per weapon.
Still trying to find a reaper torpedo or two, or else sabots. Either would likely help. Reapers at point blank range pretty much instantly overload most ships, or for unshielded ships, tear away all their armor and most of their health. Two of them is enough for a kill in most cases.
I've had little success with the other starting ships. No shield, so I can't really skirmish, break off, and come back again. Armor doesn't regenerate after all.
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Using Safety overide gives you more flux, and more imporantly, more speed to play with, allowing to RUN AWAY. This is probably one of the most important abilities in the game early on. If you get jumped by 6 frigates when you only have one, being able to simply retreat is invaluable. Any ship you don't expect to participate in combat needs this, so it can just flee retreating battles.
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Trading wise, I generally find early on a few short-lived trade opportunities between pirate and lawful factions. Generally fuel or supplies have large discrepensies, but other stuff can be such as well. Make sure you (ab)use transponder status to avoid pirate attention, while turning it on when heading back to civilized space. Probably only a profit margin of 10-20%, but can help alot. Probably got 5k from trading supplies and fuel this way.
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Bounty-searching. travel around, and if you see any friendly fleets chasing pirates around, try to join in. If you intercept the pirate a little ahead of them, they can join in. If they engage first, unless its like 10 ships vs 1 pirate, join in, and try to kill-steal for bounty/loot. Either way, you get support and get bounty/loot from pirates.
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Do not buy extra ships until you have at least 2-3x that much cash in the bank. You want to try to get and keep ~20k credits minimum for resupply, ideally 50k (and increasing as the campaign goes on). Make sure you use the abandoned station in, I think, Corvus, or else buy access to another station to keep loot until you find a profitable place to sell it. Many items will be almost worthless if sold to some stations, but other stations will pay a premium. Also save lots of fuel and supplies. You will need both, since if a system calms down you have to travel to another one.
Try to keep a wolf in storage if you can, so that if you get destroyed, you can recover.
If your cash reserves drop below around 10k, you will only be able to get 100 supplies, which is not a good situation to be in.
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Do not buy any civilian class ships. Get extra wolfs, cerberus, hounds, etc. Max speed military type ships. The latter two have good storage early on, and are able to fight reasonably well. The wolf is as above.
Civilian ships make you easier to spot and tend to be slower, so are to be avoided until you start building up a fleet. Don't be afraid to throw out a bunch of loot, its better than the costs of bringing civilian craft along.
