Honestly, my advice has been the same for a long time: Just get a Cutlass Black.

If you look at the store and filter for the $100-$200 ships, it's the only one that gives you the most gameplay options. You can bring a friend, you can take a vehicle, and it has the same firepower as the medium fighters.

It's not going to stand up that well against real pvpers, but it's enough to get away.

You might want to just rent a few different ships in that range to see what you like. You're right that most ships are role specific, so buying a few different ships in-game for the different roles you want to do is the best idea (if you don't want to spend $1k+ on the game).

I gets a little rough re-grinding the aUEC to replace your ships after a wipe, but the wipes happen less often now so it's worth it.

Finding a ship that can make good money, and then purchasing the other ships you want in-game is a decent option. The most profitable thing changes from patch to patch, so you can either just keep exchanging your ship for one that can make the most money is an option. Otherwise, just find the role that you can enjoy while grinding. Bounties are always a stable way, but that gameplay loop can get stale real quick (same with bunker missions). Salvaging is good money right now. Pulling cargo off the salvage ships using a freelancer/cutlass/hull-a is pretty decent and a quick source of aUEC. And mining is always an option if you enjoy that. The mining mechanics have improved a lot over the last couple years.

That's how I do it. Grind some cash, expand your fleet and then fly what you enjoy based on what you're trying to do that play-session. You just have to decide which grindy gameplay loop you can stomach to get to that point.

I went with the Hull A because I just enjoy being a space trucker in most games and I want to try it out in star citizen.

The freelancer looked pretty good for that as well

A good cargo hauler will take you a long ways! Freelancer, Cutlass, Hull-A, etc.

The salvage missions can make you good money atm if you just take the cargo boxes and sell them.

The Vulture is a fun ship right now and can make quite a bit of money. It's not that far outside of your price range.

I usually just bounce around to the new ships to try them out and that's why I enjoy the melt/credit system on RSI website so much.