I think I found my stride now finally with my second account. After a reset recently, I initially decided to go with minimalist engineering and ship size, and chose the Imperial Eagle as my single ship, no other ships in my fleet to keep things simple.
After a number of mission runs and some salvaging I realised the ship is simply too small and limited in terms of the versatility my second CMDR requires, given it's supposed to be the only ship they'll be flying.
So I decided to change plans and go with the good old Cobra Mk3, as cliche as that is.
And my word, has it been fun this weekend. I focused on A-rating the FSD first, so had to run a number of missions. Indite sourcing missions in particular were very profitable, but I also benefited from the recent mining commodities rebalancing - found a single ton of Platinum while scavenging, and was able to sell it for over 260k credits, in a station I found by just using the in-game galmap. Very satisfying.
Eventually I had enough cash to upgrade PP, thrusters and the rest, and took the ship to Farseer. In Open, of course. Knowing that the place is a ganker hotspot especially on Sunday evenings, I landed a bit further outside the base, and took the SRV to make the rest of the trip instead, which at some point involved a huge jump across one of the massive ravines that surround the engineer base. Just about made it, absolute blast.
All right underneath the nose of one of the most notorious gankers who was popping noob ships left right and centre.
Upped the jump range to 30ly, and G3'd the thrusters to a respectable ~500m/s boost speed. Not gank proof, but more fun. My credit balance is less than 500k, my rebuy is 270k, and the plan now is to roam the bubble and take in the sights and investigate POI's, tourist beacons, surface sites, megaships and the like. No grind required. It's great.
