Welcome back
or possibly a Python now.....
This.
A Type-7 will restrict you to stations only. Python gets you into the houses of ill-repute as....arghhh apologies I meant outposts
Regarding trading, get yourself a hauler and start prospecting, as it were. You need High-Tech stations and from there find Extraction/Industrial systems within, say, 20-30LY. List commodity prices or fill your hold with 1 ton of every expensive commodity that can be offloaded at the other station and start looking: It's like exploring - the WILL come a time when you stumble across the honey-hole: Mine currently delivers me a profit after expenses of about 6 million an hour with a Type-9.
You do need patience prospecting for a good trade route. Once found, it's yours to stay, capable of being milked for months. If you want to enlist the aid of a crutch then there are a lot of community tools out there that list routes for you. These are however hit-and-miss as the entire community may be hitting a route, tanking it in short order.
Another option is to go to the outskirts of populated space (
my current home is over yonder from buttcracknowhere) a jump or two away from a high-tech station and there are trade-routes that pay about 4.5 mil an hour. The advantage is that you are truly alone (
my home system traffic report has now been static at 1-me for months now) and you are two jumps away from the badlands of unoccupied space if the exploration bug bites again.
Good Luck!
