I wrote this guide to help you guys out with the game.

Shipwrecks
One of they Easiest ways to gain things for your ships or stuff to sell is by Scavanging ship wrecks, this can give you all stuff in all rarity's, and then you can sell them, this also gives a lot of energy cells and metal, i had moments where i need something and it was inside a wreck, like a shield charger cause my shield was loading very slow as a beginner or a new better weapon etc. Be sure to spend points in engineering.

Trading
I dont know much about Trading but you need a Trading computer this will show you the average price on station you visited. So lets say the avg. Is hundred and you find a station where it is sold for fifty this would be a good margin.

Mining
At the Beginning mining is very slow and it takes ur energy fast once ur in the game you will need a better laser (it takes long to mine) i suggest to sell all goods you mine if you dont need the crystals metal fills the cargo very fast so for a big mining tour I suggest if no station is close to destroy the metal and go for crystals maybe and put points in mining so you get extra stuff other wise its not useful.

Fighting aka Marauder Outposts
This is very hard in the beginning cause overheating and less energy, I suggest doing Scavenging until you got a Claymore with four Rapid Heavy Lasers (red ones) on the turrets (it makes it easy to hit targets) when your lucky you get a Ultra Beam Laser that has like 400 DPS and then you are very very strong. This is the setup I use now.

Mining Laser and Ultra Laser on the very front one Rocket launcher on each side on the front the red lasers on the turrets and the healing laser on the front turret ) with this build and power distribution I can warp 7.5 parsecs boost endless and shoot endless and to make the enemy die in a fraction of time use ur tractor beam on them rendering them sitting ducks.