I've played dozens of hours, but I still think I'm pretty much a noob. I've got 3 ships and the first 4 materials, although I've just started on the 4th, and the 3rd seems semi-useless. So I'm in the Titanium-age.
I play on normal difficulty, which seems maybe a bit too easy, but I hate changing difficulties in the middle of a playthrough.
Crazy Molly - Miner
This is the Crazy Molly. My first ship, and still a standard purifying mining ship. She's alright. Decent speed and she makes money. Small and not much use in a fight.
Neanderthal - Corvette
My pride and joy, the second ship - Neanderthal. She can boost-cruise (intermittent boosting) at nearly 3000/ms, she's got a modest but useful cargo capacity, and she's got nearly all the firepower in the fleet so far. She's covered in light titanium armour and has naonite stone on the front to act as a ram and fender. I somewhat unfairly abuse the fact that I seem to take a lot less collision damage than AI stations, when my firepower is found lacking.
Erectus - Fast Transport/Miner
She looks like the year 2002 in one picture
This is the Erectus. She's an R-miner, and the main breadwinner since her christening. She's covered in titanium armour for survivability and has a titanium stone ram, but she's not actually meant for fighting. She'll boost-cruise at close to 2000m/s and is meant to serve as both transport and miner.
Both Crazy Molly and Erectus suffer from poor jump capabilities, which I'm hoping to fix with research or by reaching better equipment stations.
Both Neanderthal and Erectus have been upgunned and slightly modified after the screenshots were taken, since I've been working on building new turrets on them today.
Next up I think I'll build another combat ship. Either a larger vessel with several torpedo tubes or long range-guns, or another Neanderthal. After that, I feel the need for a light transport to use for cargo missions.
Show me your fleet!