There are as many opinions on how to start off a ship well as there are players in the game. Each alliance has a differing opinion as well, and most have written "guides" for young ships. I won't spoon-feed you. You can find those webpages yourself.
As a starting ship, you have a demo mod of each type, no officer skill, $500, and Feline Grace's galaxy guide. I have my own theory on the easiest way for a new ship to proceed, but I won't put it here. I started my old college roomate out on this plan, and he did great until he got restarted by a hostile alien. You can email me for my opinion. Instead of giving you my opinion here, I will give you some facts about how to play well.
Playing well involves knowing the nuances of the game. Most of those nuances are not covered in the rules, and even some rules are not covered in the rules. I know for a fact that the rules are sometimes unclear. It is never a bad thing to ask another ships for a rule clarification, just to ask for a rule without looking yourself first. Below I will cover some of the things that have a tendency not to stick in your brain after you read the rules.
Your rank (the number you see on your URL email that says you are X out of 179) is roughly determined by the inverse of the cost of your ship if it were liquidated + any cash on hand + the factory price of any goods you are carrying divided by how many turns you have been playing. This is not a precise calculation, but it captures the general spirit of the system. A new ship can jump way high in the rankings just by getting $1000 in energy relatively quickly (email me to find out how). This rank has nothing to do with power sorting, which determines the line-up at a planet. Since I wrote this, Jeremy has modified the fomula in some way to not count unusable mods as much. However, I feel that the general idea still holds.
Sensors are used to start combat far away from your opponent, and cloaks are used to get closer to your opponent. Remember, default range is determined by the terrian: Clear = Remote, Asteroids = Long, and Nebula = Short. So, if your sensor % is 20, and your opponent's cloak is 10, you will detect him at +1 range over the default, meaning Remote in Clear (can't get farther), Distant in Asteroids, and Medium in Nebula. If your cloak is 30 and your opponent's sensor is at 10, you can get -2 range units closer to him, meaning Long in Clear, Short in Asteroids, and Adjacent in Nebula (can't get closer). This determines what the default range for combat is. The final consideration is the range preference of the combatants. Regardless of terrain, combat will start when one ship sees the other (on sensors) and that ship has achieved its preferred range. So, if ship A detects ship B at remote (pretend ship B is blind), but ship A wants to be at adjacent, combat will start at adjacent. If ship B isn't blind and sees ship A at distant, and Ship B preferrs Remote, combat will start at Distant. Remember, fractions of 10 are rounded down, so an 18% sensor v. a 10% cloak gives you no range advantage.
Weasels, Rats, Goblins, and Snakes are hostile, meaning that they will always* attack you if you don't give them a mod. The rule of thumb is that they will demand the pod with the least expensive cargo in it. However, it is best to simply select "any one" from your gift menu and leave it at that. Hamsters, Worms, and Squirrels are chaotic, meaning that they will attack you about 50% of the time. You can appease them by offering them a mod as well. *-if you can do more damage to them at every range than they can do to you, they will not attack.
Aliens never hunt, so you can always hide in space and avoid combat. Hunting and hiding is the single most confusing aspect of the game, and is covered here
Ships higher up on the power sorting at your system always go before you. So, if you want to buy a specific mod from a shop, or want to do an adventure, or even want to harvest chocolate, if a ship that is higher up on the scale wants to do them, he will snatch them away from you, leaving your officers with a wasted turn. Therefore, it is often times necessary to contact bigger ships and inquire if they plan on doing certain actions that you want to do as well, and if they are, possibly pleading with them not to.
Spending money on schooling before you have a non-demo warp is not advisable. If your warp gets so bad that it breaks every turn, you can't get anywhere, and chances are you won't have the $500 to buy a horrendously overpriced demo warp anyway. Do whatever it takes to get another warp. Buy one, beg, plead, cajole, steal, whatever. Just make sure that it is one of your top priorities.
Trading in chocolate is nothing more than a quick fix to get you out of a tight spot. Don't try to make a living on it, because it doesn't work. I tried it. If anything, trade chocolate a few turns to buy a more expensive good.
Popcorn is a mystical substance that hangs around in one particular system. You can detect popcorn by performing a long range scan. The selling price for popcorn is adequately described in the rules. The rules also state that your crew loses vast quantities of health when you harvest popcorn. But guess what? You don't have any crew. If you know where popcorn is, and can get there fairly cheaply, I would go for it, as you have no crew to lose. However, you may have to ditch your Ls, Sb, and Cl to get high enough factors to harvest it. If you do this and it doesn't work, email me and I will make it up to you. Note that harvesting popcorn gets incrementally harder the more times you do it.
"There is a little box, and a voice says "release me and I will give you X popcorn." This will release the Dybuk of Evil. The Dybuk will travel across the galaxy, causing mass destruction, until he is again chained. If you release Dybuk and are found out, you may be hunted, at least until everyone grows bored with it. Harvesting popcorn causes the popcorn reward to increase, and releasing Dybuk is the only way to reset the harvesting difficulty back to its lowest level.
Other questions and answers can be found in the TBG FAQ, which is now a yahoogroups forum and was supposed to be compiled into a real FAQ, but it is too daunting for even 5 people to do, so it will never get done. Most players will be happy to answer your questions, as long as you read the rules first and are genuinely confused.
