I haven't even tried ship building
Aside from putting a scan jammer on my ship to be better at smuggling contraband
I found a really good ship from some random side mission I got from picking up a note from a random Spacer's body. The end of that mission also included a really good legendary spacesuit/pack/helmet. The sidemission was called Mantis or something, which is also the name of the name of the armor set you find at the end of that mission. The ship is called Razorleaf.
Kinda struggling with cargo space so I've been saving up for the Shieldbreaker ship you can buy at New Atlantis for 270k.
Even just a minor investment in pickpocketing is well worth it. Damn near every vendor carries around 700 to 900 credits on them. Take the robot homie with you though, my other companion only seems to ***** and moan whenever I break the law. Vasco the robot couldn't care less about pickpocketing everything in sight or smuggling some human organs out of Neon.