The first thing to do is to fly towards the nearest grassy planet. The optimal way to fly is to accelerate to max speed in the direction you want to go, then turn so you're facing 90 degrees off and slightly away from the direction you're going. Anytime you get an object near warning, accelerate until it goes away and then flip around. Keep this up until you see blue dots, then slow down so you don't die on impact. Buy a bomber and as many bombs as you can afford. Then, hover above a tower and drop bombs (2 bombs kills a tower and one breaks its shield if it has one, don't drop too many or you'll destroy the drops). Keep this up until you can afford the best ship with a light weapon slot, the Wasp

Head to any system that's not your starter system, and head for an internal planet. Warp gates are basically free and are so much easier than flying, take them unless it would be really out of the way
Once you've made it there, do the same hover and kill trick on the towers. They have a lot more health but as long as you hover above you'll be safe. You're looking for an advanced shield and EM gun. If you struggle here, try going to a desert planet to save up money for a medium or big shield, and heavy machine gun and imperial shotgun from hub stations.

Once you have the light EM gun, use it to stunlock an orbiter with a heavy EM gun (you can recognize it by the forked end shape). Kill it with with any heavy weapon you have, the enemies around have lots, buy one if you don't have one. The heavy EM gun is half of our optimal loadout. Keep farming this planet until you can sell all the stuff and afford the vanguard ship, repair kits, slow mo charges, and everything else

Now for the other half of our loadout, the heavy cannon. This has the highest DPS in the game, with double the firing speed and slightly less damage than the railgun. There's only one place to get it, the hunter ships that patrol systems other than the starting one.

When killing the hunter, try to stay on the ground below it shooting up. They suck at firing at things on the ground, because they need to constantly turn away in order to hover. Alternatively, use your shiny new EM gun to stunlock it on the ground, then get on top and use a heavy bomber (looted from orbiting bombers on deserts, 13 damage per hit) or mine (looted from mazes, 20 damage per hit, much slower) to do single high damage hits until the enemy dies. This is better because it avoids making the killshot with a shotgun or machinegun. With those, it's nearly impossible to stop firing before the enemy dies and you start hitting its loot, destroying it.

This is also where you get advanced armor, if you don't get it from the hunter you can get it from the desert enemies in space in the non starting systems. If you get a railgun but no cannon, that's fine, it does more damage than the cannon (but slower) and works great for killing your next hunter. If you run out of them, reload your save to reset the system and spawn more. Once you have the cannon, you're done, you have the optimal loadout and there's nothing left to do. I did warn you this would take all the fun out of the game. You can buy ammo at any desert planet.

Update: I've since found out that the heavy cannon can drop from the enemies I call "lobsters" that spawn in hard systems. No need to go after hunters. Although they might be easier, they have less health and worse shield/armor, and you can fight them on a planet with gravity.

Firstly, this is a minimal guide. You need to be pretty good at the game to follow it exactly, if you aren't quite so good you might need to add more steps, for example buying a better pirate ship before going straight to the best, buying more better weapons on your way, buying better armor, shields and repair kits, etc.

Also if you like this game, modding it is ridiculously easy, you can make your own ships, weapons, armor, etc. extremely easily, you just need to edit some text and make a few textures.

Here are some other things that might be considered part of the "optimal" loadout:

• Hunter ship: Best purchaseable ship with the teleport ability
  
• Wasp ship: Best purchaseable ship with the unshield charge ability, best purchaseable ship with a light gun slot
  
• Mercenaries: Technically increase DPS, if they survive that long
  
• Heavy bomber: Best weapon for planetary fights when you're above your opponent
  
• Second heavy cannon: Highest possible DPS
  
• Railgun: Highest single shot damage
  
• Missile pod: Highest damage you don't have to aim (useless on planets)
  
• Heavy blaster: Best DPS without using ammo (heavy)
  
• Wave gun: Best DPS without using ammo (light)
  
• High velocity gun: Best DPS (unobtainable)
  
• Imperial Capital ship: Best ship (unobtainable, no ability, really big)