Start with the normal campaign, play it through. Next time your time to explore the Badlands, as there are many subquests, better weapons and more loot waiting for adventurer. Trust to your laterals, rely on the Gatling cannons, and sworn by the Advanced PatCom... and ditch the crappy turret fighters

.
Start from
this pages downloads section. And get the patch F146
And after you have fed up the normal campaign check
Torn Stars...
And then sort of a hint (some one might consider it to be a cheat) that i think most of the gamers already know. I use it only as a desperate measure to gather cargo when i just have to get the fourth Gatling Cannon:
When megafreighters start start to appear in convoys of two or three try following. Shoot megafreighters that are just coming from the L-Points with LDSI weapon. But timing is critical. You should shoot at the lead megafreighter so that the LDSI missile hits and robs all inertia from it when there is just enough space for another megafreighter to appear between the L-Point and the first freighter
-> major collision and loads of megafreighter containers released. Then just blast the released megafreighter containers to get the real cargo container to view. And take the loot.
Bit of training and you can collect piles of... em.. um... well mostly 'Frozen Sewage' and 'Raw Sewage', but there are some real goodies there too