If you don't mind making enemies in the earlier game, you can progress a LOT faster by capturing faction ships than mining or trading. The faction will come after you but as long as you set up your home in a sector that belongs to one of their enemies it will be no worse than the xenon.

Your starting ship can capture small transports, cobble together a small fleet of 4-5 small transports with 50 rookies between them and you can start capturing large transports or destroyers. You can end up with a fleet of 20+ destroyers very early into the game.

With autotraders and being friends with everyone the game gets very stale. Nothing is a threat to you, you are basically just watching your money roll in. Then when you finally do go to war you are way too overpowered to have any fun.