On my second playthrough, I took enough contracts to level up and convert my gear to mostly LRMs, then spotted with the Spider and rained down death from outside Grim Sibyl’s perimeter wall.
Then, I went around the entire Frontier, taking anti-Local Government contracts on every world. By the time I hit Weldry to start the Restoration campaign, I had two Marauders with Gauss Rifles, an Archer, and a Banshee, elite pilots, and was adored by the Magistracy, the FWL, the CC, and the Pirates. It made missions that had crushed me on the first playthrough (charging into Weldry ASAP) a pushover.