I don't do PvP, so I can't really comment on that aspect of the game. But I'm having plenty of fun plapping pirates in my PvE Type-10, as part of my journey towards earning that Federal Corvette. I find wasting corsairs in a handy RES to be a much more amusing and appropriate activity for a Naval officer than the back-to-back postman missions which are recommended by a lot of online guides as a means of quickly earning Fed rank.
The engineering of my ship is slow going, but thankfully material traders have made the entire process much less tedious. I try to mix up my engineering runs a bit by doing some research on Inara about the markets of my destination, and hauling some cargo with me. Of course I can't haul as much tonnage or make as much profit as a ship with outfitting dedicated to merchant activities, but it's another straw on the back of the Trader rank camel, and every little helps towards breaking through to Tycoon. This not only increases my market network while I'm doing the engineering work, but also provides some in-flight entertainment now that I'm flying a ship that's not made of wet cardboard.
