I played ages ago and got scared off by the learning curve, but a friend recently got me back in. The problem is that this friend has a "speedrun" mindset and wants me to get end-game ASAP. To illustrate, thus far I have outfitted my starter ship with cargo racks, did some runs, bought a type 6, did a shitload more runs, bought an anaconda, slapped cargo racks on the conda, did more runs, and recently limpet farmed resources. Next on the agenda is unlocking a bunch of engineers to engineer my ship bits (and also farm another 450 mil somewhere in there).

I'm about 50 hours deep and I barely know how to play. I recently learned how to change route settings to avoid stopping at every fuel star along the route. I've done 2 bounties in a fighter I threw together when I was bored of trading. The game is massive and I feel like I've missed out on a ton. I'm big on learning how a game ticks before trying to powergame/minmax/etc.

I guess my question is this: in my rush to the end game, have I missed anything that's important to do or learn?