After having to reinstall the game, i decided to restart playing the storyline for the thrid time. I used my previous knowledge and found a couple things:

If you're adventurous, fly through the badlands after your first mission and loot Patrol 27 and the Aggressor. The resulting stock of Justice Mk III's, plus the reward from one other mission of your choice get you enough credits to buy a defender before the second story mission, which although not needed is very much appreciated. Next, I took advantage of the game's resetting youre reputation every time you do a story mission (correct me if im wrong) , and simply blew up the Storage depots near Ft Bush every time I went by, snagging 10,000 credits worth of H-Fuel a pop. It may not seem like much but in the first 3 missions or so it really helps to get extra equiptment. Anyone else have some good hints?

Give a man fire and he'll be warm for the night. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.- Terry Prachett