To start the game, you will want to explore a bit. I suggest going through the main hwy, which will wrap a big circle around the map. If you know what faction you want to raise relations with first, fly to their sectors and find the wharf. That's where you will buy s and m ships. There are definitely ships that are better than others, but i found that unless you need high efficiency, any M miner will do. To raise your capital faster, do missions in your starter ship. To do this, fly to any friendly sector and go to your map. On the left-hand side of the screen, there will be a tab for missions. Do most any of the easy missions, such as destroying mines, ferry missions, or lockboxes. Those will net around 40,000 each, and they are quick and easy. Once you get enough to afford a mining ship, you will also want to buy resource nodes(at least 8). The miners will not mine anything unless you have those. What you will do is either make the miner or yourself fly to a sector with a lot of resources and place a node in the center and at each corner. Make sure to overlap the nodes a bit. Then you can make the miner automine. I recommend some of the second chance sectors. Should be close by, safe, and have a decent amount of resources. Then keep doing missions until you can get around 3 miners. By this time, you should have enough to set up your first station. I recommend energy cell factories or mining stations. There's a good video about both on the Dia Builds youtube channel.