Visit as many bases as possible and find a good, safe trade route. They just repeat until you can get better ships/weapons and move to a more dangerous route or start taking mission.

"I'm not a Corsair, I just spend my time taking work from them"
Child of the Hispania- http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=1404122

Trading is a great way to make money quickly, but only if you fly a freighter. And it will do absolutely nothing to improve the fighting skill that is much more important than the hardware you use. People have managed to die quickly and often even in the strongest fighters, but people have also beaten the whole campaign in Starfliers, Patriots, Daggers, even freighters.

The freelance missions in Kusari space are pretty soft for that late in the campaign but if you find them too hard to be fun you can go back to Bretonia and trash Mollys for a while. Ignore Juni until you are comfortable flying missions in Kusari without spending money on consumables like nanos/batts or missiles most of the time (torpedos are exempt as they are necessary for maximum fun battling against enemy fighters ).

The Barracuda is the best heavy fighter available at that time and the Drake is the best of all light ones. Some people prefer the Hawk since it has the same powerplant and armour as a heavy fighter but you give up quite a bit of agility/survivability. I have killed dozens of Hammerheads in a Drake with a class 5 shield but I doubt that I could have done that in a Hawk ... But for the campaign the Hawk will do nicely, it is one of the easiest ships for this.

Thanks for the reply. Can I ignore Juni for a while after she calls me back without messing up the next mission? I did it for one diamond/optics leeds/cambridge run.. but I didn't dare try a couple more. Are wrecks a decent way of making money .. I seemed to get a lot of fighting experience the last time I tried? Thanks again for your help.

Take as long as you like to turn up for the next mission and make as much money as you can. Juni is very patient, she'll sit there until you finally drop by to continue with the plot. This works as long as you are in the money making pauses between plot missions.

Took a mixture of advice and did well last night. Bought engine componants for 150 in honsomething, kusari and sold them for 1000 credit + profit at cambridge, now I'm going to fly leeds/cambridge for a while in my new cheap freighter, then truck some consumables to Kusari (haven't worked out what yet), gefore getting my new fighter. 13,000 is now 47,000 (did some basic trading while exploring kusari), but the Bretonia suggestion yeilded 34,000 and I'm feeling a lot more confident I can upgrade well in Kusari, thanks to the people who took time to reply each relply gave a little and helped a lot iin comming up with a plan to get myself out of a mini hell. Like the look of the Dragon, but is Hawk better for the mission?

A heavy fighter like the Dragon takes more skill to fly than a light fighter like the Drake or the Hawk, but it can be much more rewarding (that is why the heavy fighters are called 'elite' internally ).

Heavy fighters have basically the same power/armour rating as light fighters of the same class but they have to take much more punishment from enemies because they cannot dodge very well. On the other hand, the extra hardpoints and the ability to equip a torpedo launcher mean that a well-equipped HF can really dish it out - up to three times the damage output of a light fighter.

Especially the torpedos are a big win. No mid-level or lesser ship can survive a direct hit on the hull with a well-launched torpedo; out of an incoming enemy wing two or three ships will never even pass you once you have gotten the hang of torping.

BTW, the Barracuda is more agile than the other heavy fighters and it has more cargo space (loot!). Its only drawback compared to the Dragon is that the Dragon can afford to have its wings clipped but the Barracuda cannot because there are guns on the wings. IIRC the Hawk has the same disadvantage but the Drake doesn't.

Thanks for your time, people like you make this game more fun with legit help and advice, staying away from the blatant cheat codes... again thanks for all your time and comprehensive posts.