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?
First and foremost, this is a game. You paid real world dollars and spent real world hours. Have you enjoyed time so far? If yes, then I'd say you got an average amount of enjoyment for the money spent. That's not a bad way to start. If not, well, there's lots of time to correct it, if you want.
What do you enjoy? The shear breadth of this game is daunting but not particularly deep. I say that with love as I'm just a few sessions short of 1k hours.
What you've [potentially] done with your millions of credits is give yourself the ability to make this a drop-in/drop-out arcade game. Nothing wrong with that, I do enjoy looking for random wanted ships at beacons and such. A fun little battle Royale of sorts. You can afford an anaconda, but can you build it for battle and survive HazRes with some cargo as opposed to security-assisted bounty hunting? If combat is what you desire, there are some spicy rings calling your name. And if that gets too easy, thargoid fights will kick your ass a couple dozen times. The last few months have brought intense thargoid combat zones. They require entirely different equipment and strategies.
Or is it exploration? Quite frankly, there's not much to see. You explore for one of two things: personal achievement or personal footprint. Maybe tagging your name on undiscovered planets is your thing. There's still plenty of places to get first footfall (odyssey) very close to the Sol bubble and still 99%+ of the systems+planets left to stamp your name on for just seeing them, although they're hundreds (or thousands) of lightyears out. I personally don't seek them out, but I make sure to stamp a couple when I see the opportunity.
Or maybe it's faction advancement you like? I don't know, may catch your attention because of a name? You can do their missions and work them up to be dominant in their systems. Maybe call one of those systems home.
I'm sure I'm missing somethings here. Getting one of the most expensive ships doesn't make it the best ship. I enjoy agitating condas with my kraits. Small ships are more agile and skilled pilots can skim past large ship volleys no problem to stay in their blind spot.
There's many things to do in this game, many hours to spend, but you don't have to.