Running a jack sparrow gold (first since many versions) and blackbeard red playthroughs on the latest version, both at somewhat "middle" stage right now (late and early 2602 respectively).
*Never* had a shortage of useful things to research, got the requisites to do mutant alliance and back to school long before i bother to do them.
Important note, you get far into workshop based gear before doing either of the above, going that route in the red playthrough, many of my gals running around in metal armor with lots of other fancy gear without either researched.
There is a bit of a RNG heavy period in the early game, but eventually you will get a passably easy mission with good weapons to loot.
Losing the starting gals can be crippling early on though, as they are much better than 20k hands.
I was somewhat learning and bumbling around in the first playthrough, but one thing is clear equipment wise after that - it's piratez, you are supposed to rely heavily on loot through first few years. The stuff you loot tends to be far better that anything you can buy or produce early on, no matter if you get through the critical gates or not.
Another extremely important early game achievement is gaining basic ability to hunt down at least easy craft, it's a massive boon in money and research material. The only quick ways to do it are either get the black market seagull missiles, or take over a landed megapol craft to get their 25mm cannon with ammo (you can use it even without research). My red playthrough benefitted heavily from doing exactly that, even though i had to rely on looted ammo.
Looted 25mm can get you pretty far, if you manage the ammo well it should be a stepping stone to seagulls and\or other assembled weapons made from looted parts. In neither playthrough i can currently make decent craft weapons other than from looted parts, but in both i have several types of those available, and i also have the prize 30mm purchases available in the gold one.
Ironically, i've noticed that my higher difficulty playthrough i tend to have far better and more numerous looted weapons available thanks to meeting some better opponents few times, ironically making fights easier on the average.
Very early on in the red blackbeard playthorugh i got into a nasty pogrom mission against ratmen that were supported by ghouls and 2 cars.
It was almost a disaster, my commonly available weapons were domestic shotguns, SMGs, six-shooters, RCF rifles and so on.
But in the "break in case of emergency" reserve i had a lasgun and laspistol looted from a small government landed ship earlier on, with few batteries to boot.
Yes, cars can die to lasgun autofire.
