It's kind of high learning curve, so read a little one it
It's like Freelancer only bigger and more player controlled; your "character" is just a face and some attributes, you never see the actual character, instead you operate from spaceships and spacestations and whatnot, so your 'toon' is whatever ship you are piloting.
Ships, guns, ammo, everything can be manufactuered by players, though NPC's contribue lower end items to the market, it's all very open, PVP is brutal, if you die you lose your ship. As such, PVP usually occurs at very unfair odds in the small scale; you come through a jump gate and pow there are 5+ ships waiting to blow the shit out of you. Or you are in an asteroid belt farming off NPC's and are equipped for such, and some guy comes along who is equipped to do nothing but blow the frick out of people. Any way you slice it, the pirates will always put themselves at an absurd advantage, so there isn't much 'fair' even terms pvp unless you arrange it. There is safe space for newer players, protected by one of the game's NPC corporations, basically if they shoot at you or you shoot at them, the shooter gets the fock blown out of them very quickly.