You'll get as many recommendations as replies I reckon. It's too broad of a question, and I'd ask about budget, which engineers you've unlocked and so on.
Without that info and what restrictions you're under, or what appeals to you, it's difficult to say. With that in mind I will recommend two of the combat workhorses in Elite, the Vulture and the Fer-de-Lance.
As far as build advice, it's just so wide open. So many routes you can go. Personally I tend to use Bi-weave shields on my combat ships with the thermal resistance mod, and bringing MJ up through boosters with the aim of having purple shields with fast recovery and balanced resistances. The purple looks cool.
Weapons are another wide open issue. I'm a beams and multi-cannon disciple myself. I like efficient, thermal vent beams with overcharged, auto-loader MCs, usually setting one to corrosive depending on the ship. The FDL is nice here with five hardpoints, because you can get a pair of beams, a pair of auto-loaders and one corrosive.
I tend to opt for lighter, faster builds, and always with a minimum jump range of 30 light years. Just a personal requirement for my ships.
Two sample builds, first the Vulture
Arclight
Good speed, agility, resistances, integrity (especially through HRP resistance stacking) and jump. For me the two large hardpoints are both a blessing and curse. I've never really been completely happy with any combination I've tried, and here I went with two beams. The build I am posting has one thermal vent and one overcharged, but it's since been changed to two thermal vent. It's ammo-less which can be a nice characteristic, and the cooling effect of hitting with both beams acts like cloaking, preventing the NPCs from gaining a lock on your ship while you are saddled up and striking. This ship is a knife-fighter, meant to turn and burn, getting tags in and stripping shields. It's weak against hulls, making it a poor one v one ship. Great in a RES with allies though.
The second recommendation is the FDL, a murder-boat.
Eagle Weslake
Bi-weaves again, but Reinforced, which is simply because they were already that mod when I built the the ship and I've never swapped them over to thermal. At 3,000 thermal MJ though they're plenty good for PvE. Six freakin' boosters. Again, good speed, jump and protection. Dual beams plus autoloaders, and the big hardpoint is a corrosive MC. Huge MCs do not suffer from spin-up, no rotating gatling-gun type barrel arrangement. By putting all three MCs on the same fire group, I can snipe with the huge corrosive with quick trigger pulls, which spits out single shells. By holding down the trigger, the smaller auto-loaders kick in when they spin up, in effect a dual-stage trigger, allowing me to make more and better use of the corrosive effect without being profligate with my auto-loaders, while remaining on the same group. Beams and MCs are not very exotic or imaginative. But it's a great combo, and the low power and heat overhead with this arrangement leaves more room for the rest of the build.
I like shield tanks, and own no hull tanks. I like speed and agility, and good jump and am willing to sacrifice firepower and integrity to get it. Personally, I'd recommend a Vulture as a great first bounty hunter. The agility should ensure survival while you learn the ropes, and if not the re-buy is modest. That said, just about any ship can do this when allies are about. Pick one that appeals on a base level so that you enjoy what you are doing.
The OP mentioned scooping mats during combat. This is something I do a lot of, so I'll add one more recommendation, the Krait II
Poison Whiskey
Once again, good speed, jump, shields and integrity. The C1 slots we got last year are great, and perfect for a lightweight 1A collector limpet controller. This is the ship I use in High RES and CNB to kill ships and gather the mats they drop as well as drop in to HGEs and scoop and collect what's there.
