I started playing yesterday and am trying to find legal ways to make money (trade, exploration, bounties)

I tried bounty hunting, but im terrible at combat where I have to press more than one bottom at the time.

Trade margins are terribly low it seems, specially due to taxes.

So then I got rid of my fleet of floating trashcans. (cant store them afterall) and got 3 UAF exploration vessels for 35k a pick, took the survey skill, modifed the ships for fuel and cargo and went exploring.

A year later I have made no profit if I deduct the academy stipendium, maybe even a loss. (thats no even considering the 105k of ship buy costs)

I also managed to get stranded while my 3 ships have almost 700 fuel capacity.

Captain L.v. Hild is now seriously looking at that nice pile of drugs on the UAF market and thinking that smuggling might be the only choice once the stipendium runs dry. (not to mention that I had to restart the tutorial combat almost ten times until I just let the AI fight it out)

Edit: Thanks for all the nice tips. I will use them and try to salvage my career as fleet captain. L.v. Hild