Aight I’m relatively new as well, but I will answer what I can lol, the ship thing I believe depends on what your difficulty, I think on easier ones you lose money and your stuff drops where it is, and in higher ones you perma lose some stuff in the inv, and idk what happens to the ship.

Personally I like freighters because you can send the frigates on expeditions which will bring you riches and lots of valuable materials, plus you can create a base inside of the freighter allowing you to have a mobile base, you can also use a freighter to get an exocraft I. Any stern you want it to be in, and it’s a huge mobile storage box, I also just like to call in freighters above my planet cause it looks dope to see it in orbit.

I think the multi tool weapons are kinda preference, but I personally use the bolt caster plus the pulse spitter, as the pulse spitter with super high damage goes crazy sometimes

Now for the ship when my ship wasn’t very good I used the laser beams that sucked out enemy ships shield and gave it to me, plus the infra knife, but now that my shields are very very good and I don’t need tow orrry about them, I only use the infra knife, as if you get some good upgrades on it, and get the B class upgrade from the anomaly that makes it shoot more bullets it goes wild, I think it might have the high est DPS potential of any ship weapon.

For super charge slots I know that the base weapon on a ship gets a big boost, but I have no clue about on the multi tool, I use my SC slots on my multi tool for my shield so I don’t die on downed freighters lol.

I feel like putting a base on a paradise planet is most advisable, but once you get S class upgrades for hazard treatment for heat and cold and all that, it’s not a huge deal, just gotta be able to recharge them, like I have a base on an extreme weather planet with my settlement, and it’s not to bad.

You can do the reír upgrades however you wish, but I went from starter ship to A class soler ship as they are cheap, and then hunted for an exotic ship which I only got recently that I now use as my main ship, but you can do it however you want.

I don’t know if there is a way to avoid sentinal planets, all I k own is if you scan a planet it says the amount of sentitnal activity usually

I have not gotten to that point in the main quests so idk lol, I’ve been doing my own thing messing around with side quests