I am deadnoob

I agree with what you've said -- I have been levelling jumphole generator as much as I can without locking myself out of futher areas with each run. I've done two sentinel transfers thus far, and I'll have reset protocol for the next one in addition to my caravan protocol. I'm also trying to level the LCargo abliities like First Hamster.

there's one feature/ability later on that gives a bonus that is taken to the power of the number of disabled features you have, which makes it worth disabling a lot of features if you can max that out as I think it becomes an 11x bonus, multiplicatively, for each disabled feature. (You do have to buy a level of a feature to disable it, so this is why you buy NOTHING &c).

I'm just sorta playing afk, so not trying to be too efficient, but it appears that my next goal is getting to SL 5 and unlocking the Prime Shaver Protocol Sentinel upgrade. It seems like the most effective way of progressing quickly is focussing on speeding up your transfers as much as you can (or more pointedly, speeding up how quickly you get to +1800% bonus locked cargo from transfer distance)

I actually haven't been using Patashu's guide, have really just had it running idle for most of the time. I'm spending some time being more efficient atm because progress was starting to slow.

If you haven't done a sentinel reset yet, I'd look into getting about 10 SP or more and going for one (buy SL2 and some damage/money upgrades) It speeds you up drastically. Once you do, buy out the first two features and then prioritise anything that will increase your transfer speed (-waves per sector is the key feature for this, but also wave spawn delay when you can afford it/reach it).

It becomes (at least for a while) a matter of tranferring as soon as you hit the maximum transfer distance bonus for max efficiency. Long runs are kind of a waste of time. No need to unlock past feature #237 (other than getting the achievement for #250 I suppose) for a while either, mind you.