[jfp3]

While I can't offer much in the way of advice myself yet, I suppose I should add my initial moves.

This is starting as a Human Trader.

With the opening trades in the tutorial, you will be instructed to buy goods on Earth, then deliver to Venus, and make the return trip with a new load of goods. You will make some 3-4k from this round-trip. Be sure you click the "info" button for trade info at each location. You are instructed to fly off to Beetlegiuse. (If anyone knows what they might buy for sale on this opening trip to BG, it would be good to know). Before you leave the Sun system, try landing at Mars and get the trade info there as well. Now you have info on all 3 trade planets in the Sun system so you will know what to bring home with you after the BG segment of the Tutorial.

At BG, you will get the Drone Kill tutorial. Use Auto because you will never catch that thing on manual controls. You will need to land and repair at least one time. Do so when you have reached about 50 hull points left. On the 2nd try you should be able to kill the Drone finally. You will get another reward when you get back to Earth -- but before doing so, stop at all the planets in BG system and get their trade info. Figure out which deals are best and load up for the trip back to Earth.

Try to hit planets that are in the proper rotation around the sun so you are not wasting days doing huge orbits that are un-necessary. You will find that even a couple days difference in your trips between Solar Systems will show a change in Trade prices. In fact, save your game after you kill the Droid and before loading up your ship with goods for the return as you might find that the "deal" you thought you would have back in the Sun system doesn't now exist. But it's definately worth a shot.

You will probably have an NPC offer to join you after you kill the Droid, but I've found he gets disappointed pretty quick and leaves you without direction (which you can't really give at this point anyway so no big loss). Don't worry about him. (If anyone has any other info on this NPC, please add it).

When you get back into Sun System, make your trade quick then hit Earth for reward and more info. Update the trade info you can wherever you may land on the way back to Earth.

At this point I found that Earth will offer a couple of great deals on things, and I made 4 or 5 very quick trips shuttling goods in the Sun system before anything else. These were quite lucrative. Just watch it when you "overload" a certain destination with the same goods -- the profits will drop quite quickly.

Once you see that it's going to be hard to make any quick profitable trades in the Sun System (4 or 5 runs did it for me), then take the 1st Tutorial of the RTS (I got it offered on Earth). It is easy enough that you won't need any of the "help" offered so be sure to take it at hardest level so you take highest profit, and most experience points.

So barring the unforeseen, you should now have about 10k in your pocket and you can go shopping. I bought a Probe right away (from the Ranger Base), and set it to work on Mercury. I think the only one offered was a "Plains" one, and in the Sun System, that is the only place you can use it. It will run for 3 months, and will make you at least as much as you paid for it for this 1st try. But -- during these 3 months you should be visiting the other systems in the Sector and getting the "lay of the land"

I have found that the "News" screens give you a good hint as to what is going to be a good trade route. Be very careful if you venture too far away from the Sun System Sector. I haven't yet bought any ship upgrades so I can't give any advice to enhance the advice of the other posters to this thread.

So that's it from me for now, hopefully this will give some newcomers some very specific opening moves in the game.

Cheers!