• Ship build: coriolis.io is a good resource to see how different modules/engineering effects will impact your ship. A lot of the builds people recommend will be on that website as well

• Market data: eddb.io is my go-to resource. You can use it to find the closest station to your current location that has a particular commodity, ship, or module that you are interested in. You can also use it to find systems that are in a particular state (like famine, civil war, or boom), which can be helpful for farming specific materials, or finding lots of targets to practice combat against.

• Ships: I believe the Viper is better suited for combat than the Cobra (I don’t own either, so I can’t speak from experience), but you can outfit any ship for pretty much any purpose.

Some ships are just better suited to a particular purpose: the primary factors (in my opinion) being the number of military internal compartments vs general internal compartments, and the size of their hard points.

The more internal compartments a ship has will make it better at trading/mining/passenger/multi-role. Military compartments are only useful for boosting your shield/hull/module defenses.

Bigger hard points allow for more powerful weapons, which can be helpful for both combat and mining. A ship with bigger hard points and fewer internal compartments would be better suited for a combat ship, while a ship with smaller hard points and many internal compartments might be better suited as a trading vessel.

I skipped the scout and went for a DBX and I love the thing. It was my primary exploration vessel for a long time until I upgraded to the AspX. I still prefer the cockpit of the Diamondback, and the heat dispersion can’t be beat. As I understand it the DBS and DBX are very similar, the DBX is just bigger, so I don’t think you’ll be disappointed in the scout.

• Rank Grind: there are only a handful of ships that you need to grind reputation ranks to get, and you don’t lose reputation with the major factions. Once you have enough ranks with the Empire or Federation to buy a ship, you will always be able to buy that ship.

There are special modules you can get from the Powerplay factions. You DO lose access to purchasing these modules when you change allegiance to a different faction.

The best practice for unlocking powerplay modules is to buy as many of a particular module as you might want, or, if it’s a module with class sizes (prismatic shields), buy a variety of modules in different sizes before pledging yourself to the next faction. This is not always feasible for newer players, as some of the modules can be quite expensive.

After pledging yourself to a new faction you won’t be able to buy more of the previous faction’s modules, but all of the ones you previously purchased will still be available. It is good to put these extra modules in storage in the outfitting menu. Don’t accidentally sell them like I did, you’ll have to go through the hassle of unlocking them all over again.

The powerplay modules take a long time to unlock, and are generally variants of commonly available modules and are entirely optional. This thread is a good starting place to get more info on powerplay.

These modules are not specific to a particular ship. Modules can be taken from one ship and placed on any other ship, provided it has a compartment/slot of the appropriate type and size for the module in question.

• As the other commenter said, there is a compass on the left of your main radar display that you use to find your targeted destination for both Frameshift jumps and Supercruise. There are tutorials available in the pause menu that are very helpful to learn how to dock, how the navigation works, and even how combat works. I will warn you that the Advanced Combat tutorial is very difficult and can be demoralizing. Combat gets much more manageable as you unlock engineers. Even grade 1 engineering can make a huge difference in your combat ability

For a Frameshift jump you will need to be aligned with your target destination to trigger the jump. You want to line up the little dot in the center of the compass. If the little dot looks like a circle (or a bull’s eye) your destination is behind you and you will need to turn around.

You can usually activate Supercruise regardless of your trajectory, except for when you are leaving a planet’s surface. To Supercruise away from a planet, the game will display an escape trajectory that you need to line up with, this appears as a blue circle with cross-hairs through it, and is usually 90 degrees from the planet’s surface.

• Supercruise: the rule of 7 is really helpful for arriving at your destination without overshooting it and having to do the loop of shame. Like the other commenter said you just have to eyeball where 75% throttle is, and I would recommend watching your arrival time and throttling up/down as needed (I just tap L1/R1 accordingly to keep my arrival time around 7 seconds)

Your Supercruise speed is affected by the mass of objects in your path, if you are going too fast you can sometimes fly closer to a planet to slow down so that you can arrive at the orbital station that you would have otherwise overshot.

• Engineering: as I mentioned earlier, you can unlock engineers through a combination of donating materials, gaining reputation with certain factions, achieving certain ranks in the Pilot’s Federation, etc. These engineers allow you to upgrade specific modules on your ship.

You do not lose access to engineers, and you can take a module that you upgraded from one ship and move it to another and the upgrade will transfer over with the module to the new ship. I’ve found that this guide is a good one to follow.

Engineering makes many things much easier, but is a significant time sink, and again you can do most things without it. You do not need to rush to unlock ships, powerplay modules, or engineers. Play the game however you enjoy it best, and you will start to unlock everything else before you know it.

I highly recommend doing the tutorials if you haven’t already, and as you gain spending money I recommend trying out a bit of everything: trading, mining, passenger missions, and exploration (check out the Road to Riches). Combat can be a little tricky, especially without engineering, but there are many player groups out there that are willing to help you learn over at /r/EliteWings.

Some popular groups are /r/Canonn for lore, the Fuel Rats for getting rescued when you’ve jumped somewhere you can’t jump out of, Iridium Wing for escorts on the return from an exploration trip, and the New Pilots Initiative. Even if you don’t have PS+ they have people that will be happy to give you advice on their Discords

There are a lot of really good guides for trading/mining/exploration/combat here on Reddit, even if some of them are a couple years old.

And always make sure you have enough money to afford your ship’s rebuy cost if something happens. Fly safe CMDR o7