Newbie Guide

Here's where a quality quick start guide might go.

Here are Chubba's top tips to success (the word 'top' is debatable on its effectiveness) as of 29-10-09 24-11-09 (UK date):

1. Buy any ship other than the Dragon.
2. Buy an engine.
3. Find Centauri I and join Oracle for more missions.
4. Mission it up, mission it in - in other words go round the entire galaxy not killing stuff, but accepting space eel missions (and eel mother missions if you're feeling lush) until you've visited every planet. Then go kill some eels. This'll give you money, experience, and much merriness.
5. Do NOT increase that little thing under 'Policy' called Distinction or Faction Rank - the missions get harder. Instead, stick with it on 0-4 until you can handle MASTER PIRATES. You'll soon be swimming in cash. Mmmmmm.
6. Keep upgrading ships: My recommended combo is an Atlas and either a Raptor or Decimator.
7. When you feel like making some money, go out in your Atlas and buy some hydrogen/gas harvesters from 'outfitters' and go tile bashing. You ideally want a mix of the two because the gas takes more room. I tried working out a perfect combo ratio for the two, but I caught myself just in time. Man, I was this close (> <) to spending my time doing incredibly sad things.
8. Make sure you're part of an alliance or community before you build buildings - it's sensible to have it where it's useful. Don't bother with defense modules as of yet, because they SUCK (in a nice way :D)
9. When finished for the day, click on a planet and log out - you can't just hover over it, you've got to click on the planet name (bottom left) to be docked.
10. Sentry drones are also good to kill in the first few weeks.

Voila. I hope you feel the last 2 minutes of your life were worth living.
Please don't kill me.