Are you still in a fighter Ustwo? Do the Bala Gi missions to get the Hyperion M7 corvette. I spend most of my time cruising around in my corvette, escorting my carrier. We jump to systems that have pirates or cock attacking my merchant fleet or factory complexes. After you make a few 10s of millions and get 20+ UTraders and a bunch of connected factories, the game really takes off. Plus if you can save up about 600 million you can buy your own sector. Then you need to defend it...
And if you dont go here a lot, you will...
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewforum.php?f=2
lots of mods and tweaks