X3: Terran Conflict

- Start the Terran campaign and follow it, as you progress you'll get given free ships as quest rewards which is pretty useful. Make sure that you save often and in different slots though, it might be better now, but some of the quests used to be glitchy as hell. With the free ships, it's often best just to sell them get cash if you don't want to drive them yourself. Having them fight on AI with you will often just get them killed.

- By doing tasks for factions, or killing pirates in their space, you build reputation with them. More reputation = more stuff you're allowed to buy from them.

- Assuming you want to play as a combatant, your first goal is to get an M3 type fighter (then an M3+). You'll get one if you do enough Terran missions, but Terran fighters aren't that great, since they can only use fairly crappy weapons. Different factions' ships all have different properties, so ship around and look for one that matches your play style.

- There's a ship upgrade you need, I think it's called Combat Software or something. One version of it gives you a degree of auto aim on your main ship. This makes combat much, much easier.