The only reason I had avorion to use was because I found a wormhole across the barrier. After doing some reading around about the questline, I decided I was missing out on a lot, so I've deleted that galaxy and started over, even if I find a wormhole in this time, I'm not going to use it, I'd rather do it the way the developer intended.
So far, I've managed to work my way up to a MFF-202 (Another superb little ship) and am trying to track down trinium for the Megabee. I can then trade the crap out of things and make some decent money.