There's a small number of mods on the Nexus, a number of which seem to either be new enough, or have been updated recently enough that they should be fine to try. But a lot more modding activity seems to be centered in the developers' forum and in some FTL Discord (I don't have a link to that, sorry). This seems to be the current central, more-or-less up-to-date Mod Compendium.

I don't personally use mods, though so I can't recommend any specifically. I also don't know of any cheats, nor can I think of anything that would really count as an exploit.
Aside from "play on easy" and "pause frequently", I'd advise that you might want to look for beginner vids on YouTube. If you have any specific questions about gameplay, though, I'll try to answer.

Cheat Engine.
Gift yourself 9999 scrap, fuel, missiles, drones.