Ship Chart?

[VincentFirePony]

Its a lot of luck.
Get an afterburner asap, it can make a ton of difference, sometimes.

[floundericiousWA]

Welcome aboard!  

To address your original question: Vincent did a good job... I'll add some details for the ones I know.  For the smaller ships, I put their name and then the symbol used in game.

Here's the rough description of each:
Tarsus #   - Light scout ship, weak but cheap
Talon V  - light combat patrol craft, very weak but packs a punch and is very agile/fast
Demon M  - medium combat vessel, as fast as a talon, better protection and energy reserves, tough in a fight
Orion O  - heavy combat slug.er...tank.  Heaviest protection, high energy reserves, a real slugger but slow and boggy.
Centurion (solid diamond)  - elite bounty hunter fighter...FAST...TOUGH...MEAN...the pinnacle of mercenary ships
Galaxy X  - small merchant vessel.   good balance of protection, cargo, speed
Ulysses (big asterisk)  - another merchant vessel, new to me so I have no opinion
Stiletto I  - confed (navy) light interceptor... weak protection but there's nothing faster or more agile
Broadsword 8  - confed heavy bomber....no afterburner, a real slugger and very well protected
Dralthi C   -  Kilrathi light/medium patrol fighter....very fast, good weapons, decent protection
Gothri D  - Kilrathi elite heavy fighter...a formidable foe for ANYONE.  Heavy guns, good missiles, thick shields and armor, fast, agile, has a rear turret...tough!

Big ships:
Paradigm -  Confed destroyer, a tough opponent
Kamekh - Kilrathi corvette/light destroyer, tough
Drayman - huge merchant marine transport vessel/freighter

The others are new to me so I have no description/opinion.

In general:  Keep trying....the orginal Privateer was very frustrating at first, until I figured out that the real goal is to make the best of what you have at each level.  You're doing well, once you have a new ship and good upgrades a LOT of doors will open.

some key upgrades to the Tarsus:

You dont want to put gold level parts on a yugo, right?  So, upgrade all the armor, always carry at least 20 repair nano-robots (they work automatically over time to chip away at damage).  You should use either a meson blaster or mass driver (I'd choose the mass driver for sheer damage output/energy input factor).  

Get a missile launcher with FoF missiles and use them carefully (lock up the enemy on their approach and fire off the missile when their shields are below 50%).   Be careful with missiles, the engagement window is VERY narrow (look at your [e]valuate window in the upper right and watch for the lock-on count up and "LOCK" indication...if the ship jukes left or right and LOCK goes away, your missile will go out dumb)

Until you're beefed up....try to stick to safe systems and work the trade routes (ore from an asteroid to a refinery, adv fuel from a refinery to a big base like New Beijing, etc. and work some small courier/pass. missions).   Watch the gossip for indications of special commodity events (ex: "Andingmen in New Beijing just opened a new seam and found tons of gems" means that gems will be very very cheap at that one base until the game engine closes the event).

Have fun!

[VincentFirePony]

Very nice floundericious  :eeeee: Good advice!

Here another from the archives:
A quick money guide
Mendeleev: Slavneft buy Advanced Fuels
Vortex Prime: Hooper's Hope sell Advanced Fuels, buy Gems
Loye: PyrdionSell Gems, buy nothing
Goto 1

EDIT:
Once you get a ship tough enough to take on the Gothris, they're good for disabling and scrounging kilrathi weaponry.  :eeeee:  

[Flyboy]

Hey flounderniciousWA, ya forgot to mention the Pegasus and Nexus ships. But they only appear in missions though...

[Cheetahmen]

But they only appear in missions though...

What? You can't buy them now?

[Cthulhu]

Yes you can buy them. But NPC only use them in missions, I think that's what flyboy meant. (So you'll only see them if you're doing a mission or if you're actually piloting one, in which case you'll know what you're flying and a ship identification chart would be redundant.)

[Flyboy]

Yup! That's what I meant...

You can buy the Pegasus at New Beijing or the naval base (I forget the name) in Haack (v0.6.6 and newer only). The Nexus can also be purchased at the naval base in Haack, or on New Frankfurt. There might be other places in the new systems where you can get either one, but I'm not sure 'cause I haven't been to all of them yet.

[GLI]

[cut]The Nexus can also be purchased at the naval base in Haack, or on New Frankfurt. There might be other places in the new systems where you can get either one, but I'm not sure 'cause I haven't been to all of them yet.

Maybe it'll be good to add info about available ships. I mean in Quine, in "Trade" tab (under "imports and exports informations").

[Quaker2k9]

Maybe it'll be good to add info about available ships. I mean in Quine, in "Trade" tab (under "imports and exports informations").

Is so much information really necessary? Having to land a few times when looking for something specific before finally finding it can be more rewarding than having all the info right before you even start to think about what you want and how to get it... IMO

[VinWij]

It is if it's tucked away properly and you can find it through the quine. Nothing wrong with having some info on hand, is there? Also helps to quickly look up what certain ships are for newer players.

[Pellaeon]

Here come the pros and cons. We have a dilemma here. The advantage is, for new players, that they get the information they want at the very begining. The disadvantage, however, is that when they read through the chart, they lose the feeling, and excitment of exploring the ship types they have seen before. I always thought that I could get a Stiletto, just to find out that they are strictly for the Confeds. But when I first saw a Centurion in action, I quickly bought one instead of my well-equipped Orion. (Which is, IMHO, was a bad bargain. The Centurion is good as well, but I felt that my Orion was better.)

All these add to the memories of a player if he/she explores things himself/herself. Also, I think the ship dealer already gives enough information even if you do not have the necessery amount of cash.

[Cthulhu]

Pellaeon, this is exactly what I think also. .
Plus you have the manual, and you have to do exploration yourself, as a player.

[Pellaeon]

However, I should add, that when I was a rookie I found it very frustating that I couldn't find out what can particular ships do. The ship chart which is already in the manual helped me a lot for comparison, but since only the flyable ships' details are there, I had to find out the details myself. I might add that later it was more fun to find out the strong and weak points of other ships, particularly the Talon, the Dralthi and the Gothri.

EDIT: P.S. I think it is about time I registered.

[sudo]

As a beginner I think that it is more difficult to find out how the ships work in general (landing, jumping, afterburner, etc.) I think that a tutorial movie should be included in the AS movies folder to start out with for beginners who give up at the start before even checking out the forums. When you have the basics of the game down finding out about the ships is just fun.

I will admit, however, that it is very frustrating to try and find out which ships are good-guy ships and which aren't; before I had my color coding scanner I had two methods: sit and see who starts attacking you, and talk to ships and see for what faction the lines you can say are.

[Bugamn]

That's why you have to buy scanners. If it was easy, scanners would be near useless.