What would you do?

Hi all, I'm looking for some perspectives that I may be missing, either with my plan or ship ideas. I'm sitting on about 350 million. I am starting to get into engineering for realsies (I only have farseer and Todd unlocked right now) and I'm already frustrated that I'm not able to get a lot of my mats right off the bat. I've just started using inara and I had an idea pop into my mind.

I'm kinda feeling like I've been grinding a lot lately and thought it might be fun to just explore for a while, but with a purpose. Using inara, I can just collect as many materials as I can and just travel around getting everything I need. I was looking for a good ship for this and there are loads of options. I think that a phantom or python (or maybe anaconda!?) would be ideal, but I'm not exactly sure what I should focus on.

This is what I'm looking for. I'm in PvE. I want to be self-sufficient for a long period of time. I don't want to be running back and forth to stations a lot. I want to pop out of the bubble and passively make money with exploration. However, I mainly want to explore for engineering mats. I need to be able to defend myself but I'm not going to necessarily do any fighting if I can help it. I'm versed in fighting with my vulture and I know I'll need combat sites for a lot of my materials. I'll also need surface based materials and mined materials from space. I have engineering available for my fsd, but ultimate jump distance is not my goal here. Soooo, I guess my ship will be a multirole with the goal of being a self-sufficient engineering gatherer with enough teeth and protection to keep me out there. What do you all think?

Also, differing points of view are welcome as well as other strategies. I just want to take a break from grinding rep for a bit and thought this would be a great way to get into exploration while getting mats. I'm going for chill, here. Any pointers?