Infinite Space

Money is actually fairly tight in most of this game. Never extremely so, but you're generally gonna budget around selling an existing ship of your fleet to get something better rather than having a fleet of spares. You'll know when you're gonna get an opportunity to upgrade to something good because a boss fight will just dump tens of thousands of G into your account.

If you click on the little DS image in the top-right when looking at ships in the Shipyard, it'll tell you any special details about them like built-in weapons or features like fighter capacity.

Fighters break the game clean over your knee the moment you can get them. Most ships don't bother with AA guns (or even decent ones), even some of the bosses, and will just melt under 60+ angry metal wasps stinging them repeatedly.

The multi-role fighters are really your best bet rather than the Strikers, because they capable enough to crush enemy fighters in seconds with zero losses on their way to sink the enemy fleet.

When you start seeing ships with Fighter capacity, don't go for the early carriers on offer. Save your money for the Eudora Cruiser instead; It has a larger hangar than anything else available at the time and a pair of these will see you through a fair stretch of the game before they need replacing.

There are a lot of recruitable crewmembers in this game, and the window for recruiting some can be pretty slim or esoteric. Just enjoy the game and know you're not gonna see everything in one playthrough.

That said, when you get missions that typically send you somewhere and back again, take the time to visit the (!) places on the way back if you had to stop on the way to your initial destination. Sometimes you'll get crew or even ship blueprints as a little thankyou.

The game is generally very blatant about branching paths (there are several through the game), but there is a very sneaky one relatively early-mid game that will affect late-game content significantly as a soft "Bad Route" if you flunk a few choices. It won't change the overall ending, but it will make things go worse along the way and make the game harder getting there. If you want to know what to specifically do, follow these choices after you've saved someone from a kidnapping;
- Buy and give real flowers
- Yell at her
- Side with Nova Nacio.

HELP is invaluable and will describe every Command and Active skill in the game if you go digging through his menus.

If you get into a stretch of chain battles during the story, you may notice it momentarily drops back out to the cruising screen. If you can tap the icon in the bottom-right of the screen quickly enough, you can totally just fly back to the nearest planet and save.

This is a mid-game thing, but Do not go to Zenita on your first playthrough. They are not kidding about it being harder, and it's scaled for a NG+ run. Take the other path instead.

While Gen's gonna be your First Officer for most of the game due to Formation Foe, if you get stuck in a really hard boss fight try using Kira instead. Her Mercy Angel ability will heal your ships.

Unless you can find someone with a melee skill and higher Combat stats than Yuri, do not fill the Security Officer role in your crew as it replaces him in melee battles. Instead fill the secondary Security role first to add on to Yuri's stats.