How to make money fast.
As someone who insists on using mods when they are available for the game, I have ruined my X4 experience many times. There are mods to reverse the cyrstal-mining nerf, but I’d suggest opening pirate ships and data vaults to make some early credits without ruining the experience and losing your interest too quickly.
If you ever see a midrange BUC or SCA ship, they are free play to try and steal with no consequences to the early game. There may be other factions for you to do this with, but their relationships are locked until you go down their storylines, or use mods to unlock them. do You can then take these ships and sell them, or use them yourself for your desired role. There are good videos on YouTube to guide you through this.
Another way to get good credit early on is to have a cheap, fast ship to collect the goods in several places where there are frequent disputes. Use the default order of ‘Repeat Orders’ so that they keep doing this until you stop them.
You can also search the interwebs where derelict ships usually spawn early in the game so you can put marines in your starter ship for each and then fly to them and claim them. I only claim two or three, a miner to start mining and an L ship to sell for credit. The miner (argon drill) is in the northwest part of the void (dangerous clouds are in this sector, so be careful), and the L-ship is somewhere to the W in the sectors of false logic (xenon sector, be careful).
Any of these, or anything similar, will leave you with a real sense of accomplishment and prevent the burnout that can come with some of the methods I’ve used over and over again in the past.
If you search the interwebs for more, be sure to check out how to steal blueprints, and how to boost reputation/relationships by shooting down small criminal civilian ships that sometimes get close to your station. are
Some of this may be known in advance, but one may gain some of it later.