Official wiki has a lot of info. If you are playing on Hard or above, you really need to know how the dice pools work, what talents can get you out of serious trouble etc. I would not recommend being a moron like me and thinking, oh, how hard can hard be? Answer is, yeah pretty hard. You need to know certain things about the various systems to have a fighting chance. Once you master those, then you can start pushing your envelope. So I recommend doing a few runs on normal or lower and skip the story missions and just go around trading, fighting, patrolling, spying etc.
Big tips I learned the hard way:
Assign your talents at the start for your crew. Take all the auto pass skill check talents. You can reassign them later when you crew is better.
Reputation is everything.
Watch out for trade bans. You will suddenly discover that you are the most wanted legendary criminal for a faction just by trading methane with its enemy. There are warnings and feedback but it’s easy to skip that if you are push the sell button happy.
Pay attention to the star system danger and reputation numbers. Choose your travel routes accordingly.
Pay the bribe if you aren’t ready to fight or flee.
If you have positive rep with a faction, merchants and scouts can just be escaped from, even if it says that you might lose some rep by fleeing. Spies I haven’t figured out yet. I think there is a rep threshold for them. Same with zealots.
Build up good rep with a couple factions by doing missions, patrolling. Missions are a great way but you will most often lose rep with somebody else. Manage that.
Take the Merchant contact to start. You can do some easy milk run missions for 10k ish in your starting system and then have enough rep to buy a merchant. They have a level 5 talent that lets you dump cargo for an free escape from pirates.
Trade
Use contacts to get trade permits so you can sell in between stops. You have to build up rep with them to buy the permit. Do a mission or sell them intel if you can.
Trade is a great way to pay for your fuel and upkeep as you go. You need to figure out the way the sell system works though. Trade permits are needed to unlock different tiers of goods. Trade Laws are a separate system that governs where things can be sold. Level 10 is mega legal. Level 1 is death sticks.
Buy Trade Law level 10 stuff when you go into a system that you don’t know well. Otherwise you can get stuck with a hold of goods that you can’t unload. Crystals, Clothes and Water Purifiers always work well for me.
Indies sell without trade permit restrictions but do have trade law levels
Mine to refinery and Industry to Farm and Farm to Pop are pretty good connections.
Card Games
Patrolling, Blockading and Spying need talents to be effective.
Be conservative when you first start out. That -5 card will get picked. If you can’t afford or handle it then don’t try it.
Patrolling helps increase rep.
Blockading is for yo ho hoing and flushing out prey for capture/kill
Spying is about getting intel to sell which lets you raise rep and buy cool stuff with contacts
Watch your fuel, crew health and morale while doing these activities.
Ships and Space and Living to Fight Another Day
You will want to buy a better ship but don’t just save up a pile of cash while your current ship is the Flying Noob. You will die. A lot. I know.
Upgrading components is mostly about the + Stats that they give your ship so you can have more strong/standard dice in whatever is being tested.
Click on your ship and make sure you have over 100 percent in the main cats. Over 200 percent won’t help at all. In combat only up to 100% is useful but having a buffer will help when the damage and injuries start coming in.
Come up with an escape plan. Don’t panic if it won’t work at first. Sometimes a pirate or xeno will use Twitch Surge (pilot) and you will find yourself at range 4. Stay calm.
You want good Ship Speed, Nav Numbers, Electronics to get strong dice. Command helps for normal dice.
Good talents are Bolt (spy), Sharp Steering (pilot), Fast Getaway (nav). If you can put a defuff on the chasing ship with a weapons hit or the Elusive Barrage (gunner) talent that can help too.
Have a talent to remove crippling debuffs.
Crew Combat
Always have a doc/combat medic on the team. This will be one of your officers at the start. It’s good if they have high quickness. (Cough) Restart Game (Cough)
Buy a Weapons Locker upgrade. Just buy it. Level 3 minimum at the start. You will be much better off.
Figure out how initiative works. Super Imortant. Quickness and Wisdom are the intiative stats. Get those on your away teams.
Talents let you replace basic attacks with better ones. Some of the cost more initiative but some ARE THE SAME as your basic weapon attack. Use those. Don’t be a dummy like me and use the basic attack instead of the better one (there are some situations where you might want to use the basic if you don’t want a knock back or some other effect but those are rare.)
DO NOT SPEND more than -10 points of final initiative in a round. or you will get a stiff penalty to initiative in the next. Snipers are really suseptible to this since the initiative cost for their weapon is so high.
Use talents that give you a dodge bonus. They really help at the start.
Figure out some debuffs to have on your crew. Thinks like grenades and smoke can really change a battle. Bounty hunter has a great 2 target debuff.
General Tips
Watch out for rumors. Xeno Fleet, Pirates are the two biggies for me. Xeno especially. Pirates can be managed but unless you are specced for fighting you are going to pay for repairs and probably more than any ransom that you get.
If you are playing the story line, watch the timers. These Cadar Royals are not the type to wait around for you.
Stop in orbitals to refuel and send the crews to the spice halls to keep morale up.
Watch your morale. Don’t land on a pop center if you have somebody with dangerously low morale. They will leave. Even your old buddy the nav who you really want to level up to get skip off the void. He’ll still say sorry cap’n. Your chum bucket sucks.
Get a talent to help prevent desertion if its really a problem. If you are doing a lot of combat, morale can tank quickly.
Never run out of fuel. Refill as you go and plan your route. Your morale will suck, your ship will break and your crew will desert. Watch out for mutiny as well.
Rename all your crew after anime characters. My XO is Asuka Langley Soryu. I only wish I could find her a giant fighting bio robot.