Also helps quite a lot if you make a 'support station' of sorts for new colonies with medical and recreational facilities iirc
Yeah that would be my barebones, just the commerce and med/rec. Still build the defensive components tho. Every other required comp is at the bare minimum necessary for a valid design. The "upgraded" version has the requisite extra factories, docking ports, weapons, more reactors, etc.
Also now I know how to kill the damn space lobsters, all I needed was a ship with 41 cruise speed, decent turning (15 or more seems to work fine) enough fuel cells and as many missiles or torpedoes I could fit (no warp! that thing is heavy). Two of these cheap-ish appear to be quite able to kill one without a scratch. One vs one kinda works too but at least with missiles it takes too long and might run out of fuel.
Killing groups is not hard if you split your ships manually between targets since the monsters aggro the ship that attacks them and ignore the others even if they pass right thru them.
EDIT: Forgot to put that the ships need to be at stand-off distance for all opponents. Although I'm not sure it matters if it only has one kind of weapon.
Here is a tip for anyone playing pirates. Goto the design editor, and uncheck using the latest components. That lets you make mini mining stations and such using very old, outdated tech that doesn't actually affect the mining rate at all.
If you build em right, you can get mining stations that cost about 1.1k and are under 175 maintenance.
This is useful even for non-pirates, it's a good idea to keep your civvies with the Gerax hyperdrive and ion thrusters while the state ships enjoy more expensive components. Sure you don't pay for them but they suck the rarer materials out of your cargo holds.