Yes well making your own goals is sorta the point of sandboxes.

Fired up my old save of the game. And... immediately I confirm the reasons I'd been hesitating to do so. I have forgotten everything. Not just the controls but also just... the plot... I have no idea what I was doing before. But the early game is too grindy for me just start a new file from scratch. It's gonna take me awhile just to figure out what I should do right now.

I've got a self sufficient spaceweed complex set up in Ministry of Finance over in the southwest of the universe. I seems to be my first and only station complex... I think it started as an energycell production chain and I tacked on the rest afterwards.

I have vague memories of flying around allot in the nearby Yaki pirate sectors a bit north west of here. Either trying to butter up the Yaki pirate's or force one to bail out of one of their advanced chokaro TM's. Which a look at my property tab says I haven't yet succeeded at... That might requite explaining... A TM class ship is a military transport. You can dock fighters in them. In this one's case it's special because it's both the fastest of it's class and holds the most fighters. 6 compared to the standard 4. By the time you get one of these though you're probably flying bigger and better things so it's more a novelty piece. But more standard TM's make good utility ships. Enough storage that you can haul things along with bringing along a selection of different fighters for various combat and scouting purposes.

There are a pair of TL's I own floating nearby. These are your super size haulers. They tend to be too slow to use for money making, no they exist because they are the only things large enough to haul the kits you need to set up space stations. One is the Argon Mammoth and the other the Split Elephant. The Elephant is the cheapest of it's class, smallest cargo hold, fastest, biggest hanger, fairly respectable armament. Which makes it a nice step up for mobile player homebase for the section of the game when you can get ahold of it.

A pair of TP's. They are personnel transports. You can run passenger missions in them but they tend to be a bit too specialized lacking cargo capacity to do other things well. You could use them to carry marines for boarding but early in you probably don't have the reputation to spare trying. Haven't tried it yet. I think getting marines trained up so that they are effective was a bit of a pain in this game as well but I can't confirm.

I've got 9 various TS's most of them mining rock in Ore Belt with one of them collecting it from the miners to shuttle off to the mammoth from earlier. I guess I've got it currectly sitting and waiting to fill up before selling in bulk. I've long since forgotten how this particular set up works so I'll have to look up a tutorial on it. TS's are your more standard transport ships. They come in a variety of sizes and cargo capacities and mostly are used for moving things. The backbone of your economy, especially when you can automate them though that's a bit of a task especially in the early game when you might not have the half million for the trading software to run them.

Actually there is a 10th variety of TS I have. 2 of them for some reason when I only have 1 each of all the others. Not sure why. This variety isn't that special. They are unequipped and slightly damaged and according to the logs relatively recently acquired. Did I find them floating somewhere? Were they bails? Those buy ship offers where you can buy used ships and repair them up manually to make a profit reselling them? I have no idea... But here they are parked at a station beside my Xperimental Shuttle... On the exact opposite side of the universe from the rest of my assets. Why am I over here again? Maybe I was mapping sectors or something... The shuttle is neat. A M3 class... a heavy fighter and this one is specifically a unique ship you get from plot mission. It's not quite the fastest in class and it's not quite the tankiest either but all around it pretty good.

I don't have a M1 carrier or M2 destroyer yet. Probably rep locked. Nor do I have a M6 corvette yet or a M8 Bomber. I'm told at one point in the series the M classification system made sense. But X3 broke it by adding everything in between the heavy fighter and the destroyers. I've got a M7 class Panther. It's a oddball ship. M7's are supposed to be frigates. This one lacks the direct forward firepower though is well covered in turrets. What really makes it special though is the 32 fighters it can carry in it's hanger when the next most spacious hanger in this class only holds 9. Some full sized carriers in the game have less hanger space. Right now it's my garage for all my extra fighters but I had some fun flying it around as my player ship previously for more dangerous combat missions. Mostly you just fly it through swarms of fighters and let the automated turrets rip things apart at their leisure. Though for direct combat unless you are willing to throw away money on blown up fighters there are probably better things to fly. I probably just wanted it for parking my collection.

6 Varieties of M5 scout fighters. If you're really good supposedly you can dogfight in these. But I'm not that good. Paper thin shields and hulls. Limited armament. But fast enough to usually run away from anything hostile. Great for mapping sectors. 9 varieties of M4 fighters. Midsized, these aren't fast enough to run from everything and not sturdy enough to stand up to allot of punishment either. 10 Varieties of M3 heavy fighters. Sturdy and well armed but annoyingly slow if you are chasing down enemy fighters. Sounds like allot of fighters all in all but really I'm just scratching the surface at this point when it comes to my goal of own one of everything. Haven't even gotten started on some of the plotlines either. Like the Hub or personal headquarters. Seem to have a heavy bankroll at least. Almost 100mil to spend once I figure out... you know... how to play again.