Honestly I didn't even have to cheat money, I made enough finding and selling good quality gun parts, extra meds and cyberware I looted from the early areas since the loot you find in chests and on enemies scales with you based on what you have. Pay attention to the value to weight ratio the game shows you and be mindful about what you're bringing back to vendors to sell.TL;DR:
Cheat some money, get the best food->energy implants and never be out of energy again. With the money get food/drinks and the only annoying thing is having to use it from time to time. It will hopefully be balanced in the next version and the cyberware stuff is nice.
My experience with v21:
I'm downloading the crack and I know a lot of new mechanics were introduced in the most recent version of this in development game. This means one thing for me: CHEATS!
But first, let's start a new game. Ok cool, cyberware. These thugs can't steal my metal spine or my next-level eyes with night vision and shit. And it's a nice long-term progression system where you can dump all your money into after having great gear. Noice! Aand survival stuff. So while I'm reading all the new implants effects stupid Ivy is getting hungry and thirsty. Well, shit. The survival stuff is overtuned. Whatever, I'm still in the hideout so I cheat money and trader has everything I need, so no more hungry and thirsty.
Now, starting the first raid and doing the first few story quests highlights the cyberware implants that convert food stuffs into energy. Nice! I don't want buy batteries in addition to food/drink all the time. So after I get back to hideout, money cheat and get maximum food->energy cyber upgrades. Now kickstart the machine with a battery (I was fully out of energy) and since then I've never cared about energy again.
After using the cheated money for quality of life features like the energy implants and more foods, I leave the money at home and try to have a more conventional experience. After playing for a few hours I was used to eating/drinking every few minutes and was fully on the grind for better gear. So now I'm the core gameloop from prevoius versions with the added complexity of cyberware and the new health systems.
I think the game is getting better and better, but while many systems are still changing often and are unbalanced, I am relying on cheats to optimize my gaming experience. But that's what they are for. And I'm having a blast with this game again and again after each update.
I tried going to the further out areas but night time is really hard to deal with along with corporate enemies still feeling like they cheat makes me generally not like exploring further than the starting highway map.