Just over 1K from Sol and already finding objects with no name on 'em.
I just upgraded to a Python. It sure is more maneuverable than that Federal Dropship I had. I want to see how it handles during and FSD interdiction. Well, not yet; I didn’t quite have enough money to buy class A thrusters before heading back to my regular stomping grounds, so I sold my weapons. So now I have no weapons and not enough credits for insurance.
Time to go exploring?
Or see what cargo missions you can get in Procyon. They should still be offering ones that don’t require leaving the system.
Got my finances out of the danger zone. I think I stumbled onto a good place for data couriering early on. It’s a bit like the aforementioned Alpha Centauri runs, but quicker. I even checked out Barnard’s Star to see of the runs to Alpha Centauri pay more, and they don’t seem to.
I’m interested in seeing how engineers work. I’ve got one sorta unlocked who wants some meta-alloys, and I’ll apparently need an SRV to get some. That should be interesting.
Is it possible to gain ranks with more than one superpower, or do I have to choose between them?
Don’t need to choose sides unless you’re in Power Play. I’m currently a Rear Admiral and a Knight.
Completing missions, both cargo & passenger, for minor factions that are aligned with major factions count toward promotion within their major faction. Except Alliance, of course. 
Good to know that I can go for the Imperial Clipper without worrying I’ll have painted myself into a corner if and when new ships get added.
I’m in the midst of a little misadventure. Like I said, I want to start engineer stuff. The one engineer I had unlocked apparently wants meta-alloys. The wiki says I can buy them in the Maia system. The sky looks freaky out at the edge of the galaxy. I land at Obsidian Orbital, and I get a message from someone asking for Thargoid resin. A quick flip through the wiki says that I should first get a corrosion-resistant cargo rack, but I can only get one at a specific port, which you can only access when you unlock a certain engineer, whom you only learn about from another engineer (and I don’t know how far back that goes), even though I think that the engineer in question was the guy who messaged me in the first place.
I think, okay, maybe I can go get some resin and deliver it quickly before it eats a hole in my hull. I head to jumps over to so-and-so system, make an educated guess as to what moon to land on, and fumble around for a while trying to figure out the coordinates system. I find the Thargoid wreck, and see resin strewn around it. I land and deploy my Scarab and… I can’t collect them. I just drive right over them, even if I go real slow (and yes, my cargo scoop was deployed). I try with my ship’s cargo scoop, and all I manage to do is destroy a couple of the resins and presumably ruin my ship’s paint job.
So, do I need a special cargo rack after all, or is the way of collecting the resin right under my nose?
Darnielle’s Progress is the only port that sells 'em. 
Should’ve worked. No, that’s not me; I’ve not been in Maia since buying Meta-Alloys for that engineer.
Good thing I stayed near the wreck when I logged out. A few more tries and I got the resin. I grabbed a Thargoid technology sample for good measure, and hurried back to Maia. As I entered the port, my cockpit canopy started to crack from all the corrosion. Oh, and I may have committed a crime by bringing that tech sample with me. In hindsight, maybe I should have tried to sell it on the black market. Anyway, there doesn’t appear to be a followup mission so far, so up next I’m off to see Felicity Farseer.
The work she does on thrusters and frame-shift drives makes Farseer probably the most useful engineer in the game. My Asp Explorer has some of her level 4 FSD work.
Had my first taste of the engineering system. It took 32 jumps to get from Maia to Farseer’s system; it would take 25 to get back. Not bad. I just wish I had saved some exploration data to sell to her.
I suppose now I get to grind materials until I hate the system.
Materials aren’t that much of a grind, except for rare stuff like Yttrium or very rare stuff like Antimony.
Haven’t they changed the material grind now, to make it different? I haven’t looked at it since they did it
All I know is that I rarely surface mine yet need to drop materials every so often to make room in their hold for the rarer stuff. 
Next time there’s a Steam sale, I’m gonna pick up another copy. Set up a second account for exploration.
Any tips on what kind of weapons to use (on a Python)? I’ve had a bit of success with beam laser, but I gather that the community generally thinks they’re not very good.
I decided to head out on a real long-distance passenger mission. I’m over 1,200LY from home so far; about 100 jumps into a >900-jump trip each way. Even though I replaced all of my cargo racks with fuel tanks, my plotted route shows no fuel stars. It’s just brown dwarf after brown dwarf. The weird thing is that there’s a red dwarf near the last star on the route. I re-plotted the route to there, and I’ll figure out things from there.
Edit: This was just after refueling, for the record.
You haven’t accidentally changed the galaxy map to only show you brown dwarves, have you?
No, I can still see the occasional red dwarf in the region; my plotted route just didn’t pass by any of them.