In order to accomplish the "Destroy The Planet Killer" level of the game/simulator without destroying your ship you must have it equipped with "Tricobalt Torpedoes." (Be warned: Not every ship can support the use of "Tricobalt Torpedoes." If the ship sent on the mission is not equipped with these, it will be destroyed!)
Better Parts
If you play under the difficulty level of "advanced", you will have a wider selection of parts for each vessel you decide to use. For instance, the Defiant class ship's original defense mechanisms only included a navigational deflector and shields. With an advanced playing level, you are also granted the use of ablative armor and a cloaking device. Also, when you pick your class of ship, the hull mainframes will be empty. This gives you room for modifications.
Big Bucks in Seconds
Go to any of the difficulty levels,and then go to the "Fleet" screen, and select a fully loaded ship(must have 2 torpedo launchers and all types of probes, best to use a Galaxy, Intrepid or Excelsior class ship). Go to the select mission window and select the mission "Test Launch a Probe and Collect Data" Once in the simulator select, from the control bar to the right of the screen, Accelerate. It will take around 10-15 seconds to complete the mission
Extra Buying Credits
First you need to create a ship using as many credits that you can, the more you use the easier this trick will be. After your ship is built use the "Export Ship" function under the Fleet Heading. Once you have done this, go to the Main screen and enter a new "Admiral" name. Then use this new name and go to the fleet screen once again. Once there, use the "Import Ship" function to import the ship you created. Once it is in this new fleet, decommission it and the value of the ship will be credited to your buying funds. Keep Importing and decommissioning the ship that you created and your buying funds can go through the roof. I stopped at 1 Million credits.
Get Ships Without Paying for Them
To get ships without paying for them do the following. Create a new admiral and then start constructio on a ship, it doesn't matter if you run out of money. When you have completed it (or run out of money), go to the fleet screen and export the ship. Now, go to the options menu and delete the admiral you just used. Create a DIFFERENT admiral and go to the fleet screen of this admiral. Import your ship and bingo, you've got your ship without paying for it (or if you ran out of money, continue building it and then repeat the procedure remembering to use a different admiral every time)
Lots of Money
Open the program and create an Admiral. Check the amount of money you have. Close program and open Wordpad. Open the file C:\Program Files\Starship Creator\Shipmain\Usrs\Usr1.cst. If you have more than one Admiral, increase the Usr1 to Usr2, etc. Do a search on the amount of money you have. Replace it with all 9's. Do not enter more 9's than the number of digits already there. Save the file. Run the program and you should have the new amount of money for your Admiral.
Beat The Planet Killer...