My response from another post copy and pasted. Apologies for my bad english and typing, I was at work when I typed it out.
INCOMING WALL OF TEXT. Sorry. Got a bit carried away
Well the numbers game is kind of self explanatory. EDSY is more accurate, however Coriolis is a lot simpler. both will provide you with the means to see what values are changed by which modules.
One of the most important things you should bear in mind when understanding how ships fly, is the Optimal/Minimum/Maximum mass statistic on your Thrusters, This dictates how much of an increase in performance you can obtain via different total mass values on your ship. The Minimum stat is the weight at which you are obtaining maximum performance possible from the thruster units, Optimal is essentially the target you want to be aiming for as you will get, as it says, Optimal performance. When over Optimal Mass you begin to incur a penalty to overall thruster performance, and the closer you are to Maximum Mass you will be incurring the biggest possible penalty to your ship, if you are to exceed this number, the thrusters will no longer be able to manuver the ship effectively. All of these things affect your Pitch/Yaw/Roll Axis (This is one of the chief contributary reasons for new explorers faceplanting planets. IE: The ship sits too close to the maximum mass stat resulting in hugely inefficient thrusters)
Another set of stats you want to pay close attention are your MJ vs Resistances and Total HP to hull vs Resistances.
Typically PvPers build ships defenses in two main ways.
You have capacity builds, which rely mostly on pure MJ, but often with fairly decent resistances to back it up. IE: Your typical "Meta" FDL runs a Prismo with mostly Heavy duty Skill boosters, with maybe a single thermal to keep up the lower resistance. Typically they also run a Reinforced Shield generator to offer up the maximum capacity. This build has proven to be so effective due to pure hitpoint overinflation, allowing it to both ram, and tank a stupidly large amount of damage whilst being far more effective vs Plasma weaponry. Plasmas dealing 60% Raw damage with a 20/20 spit to Therm'/Kinetic. So having the extra MJ is self explanatory.
Then there are resistance builds. Typically these are Bi-weave ships either relying on very fast shield regen and damage reduction (Generally over 50% resistence across the board) to make the relatively limited number of MJ go far further. These are more advisable in smaller ships, due to thier typically higher shield regeneration, though they can be very effective on ships like the Chieftan and FDS. Typically both those ships have thier shields back after less than 40 seconds, less than 25 in the FDS. Typically these builds are very difficult to kill without applying constant pressure, so tend to be favoured by pilots who have a higher skill ceiling in evasion, but the FDS is a strange exception here. Typically this form of shielding is far more effective vs tracking weaponry due to them being entirely resistance based. These shield setups typically use a Thermal shield generator with a pair of resistance aug' boosters, maybe with a heavy duty one to back up the lower capacity.
You can find hybrids of these two setups, where some have tried to find the optimal balance between plasma resistance and your general weaponry. Some of these are also hugely effective, however a large majority have sacrificed too much from both and have ended up with something very sub par.
For armour again they are pretty similar to the shields. A mixture of good resistances and high capacity is much easier to achieve here due to the HRP's not requiring any power. Always advisable to make sure your optionals for PvP consist of nothing apart from MRPS/HRPS/SCBS/Interdictor, do not stray from this as you will have a hugely comprimisied defense upon shield drop, which you can almost guarantee your opponent will not have.
But here is arguably where you will be adding the majority of weight to your ship so pay close attention to how close you are to that Optimal mass.
This is far more important on smaller vessels where you have to abide by much finer tolerances. It becomes less essential to montior in the medium size class due to the mass curves on the thruster being so much higher. They will still play a part, however the difference in performance is much more negligable.
Basically the numbers game is about getting the best bang for buck you can with the limits of the ships. This is why some ships appear to be much more powerful than others. Simply because they have less limitations.
As for flight characteristics, that is something you really have to experience yourself. finding a ship you are comfortable in is the first stage, learn to fly that effectively and know where it's handling limits are. Then it's always a good idea to spend time in other vessels to learn how they handle and where thier limits are. Thus inturn improving you long term ability to fight against them.
The best way to go about familiarising yourself with ships is simply to go to a RES or CZ and shoot at the AI. Theres very little risk and it's a good way to know where you stand with certain ships before jumping into PvP. Aside from players actually being able to fly however, the biggest thing to take note of is that the pressure applied from a whole squad of AI is still not even remotely comparable to the kind of pressure a lone player can put you under.
Having the ability in your chosen vessel to control the fight cannot be understated. If you let your opponent find a rythum there is a good chance you'll get annihilated. Being able to break thier rythum with out of place turns and regualr vector changes are the best way to put someone off.
Also worth noting that different ships are cabale of vastly different manuvers. Ffor instance the Chieftan has very powerful lateral and dorsal thrust like an FDL, however due to the thrust acceleration output being far lower, they find thier evasion via rotation as opposed to being able to slide sideways in widening or narrowing barrel rolls like an FDL would.
the best bit of advice I was ever given though is to just throw yourself into it. You're gonna die. Alot, but don't let it annoy you, even if they won't publicly admit it, even the PvP "Gods" were scrublets once. They just don't like to be reminded.
Put the time and effort in, you could be the guy that gives them that unsightly reminder.
Another thing worth bearing in mind is DPS, PSD, Heat generation, and distributor draw and how they all relate to one another. DPS, is pretty self explanatory, but is no use if you hae emptied your capacitors in mere seconds, PSD (Per Shot Damage) typically involves less DPS and is usually used to describe PA's and Cannons.
When you fire a weapon and it removes energy from the capacitor you will notice the more that is drained, the greater the heat production, this means even though things like OC lasers seem quite appealing in DPS terms (For a weapon with unlimited ammo), in actual practice, due to distributor draw, they can not only be out of puff in mere seconds, but also generate a large amount of heat. Whereas due to the low heat and draw of kinetic weaponry, OC is a much safer bet.
You want to find a nice balance between DPS or PSD (PSD weaponry yields significantly better results, however you have to land them which can prove challenging when not well versed with fixed weapons) ,and distributor draw, whilst making sure your heat does'nt spike to high. Good pip management can aleiviate this somewhat , but not totally.
Guess that leads me onto the actual practical side of "Gitting Gud".
If you are new to FA off combat, equip a relatively tanky ship with some fixed weapons and go to the local anarchy HAZRES. Spend your time flying around asteroids using as many different thrusters as possible, remember your boost can be dragged through all of your thruster units, regardless of where they are on the ship, thus allowing you to separate your targeting from your flight path (True 3D flight).
Then when you have a feel for the ship, go and shoot at the T9's/T7's, being large slow targets they give plenty of opportunity to practice positioning and aiming, as you graduly get more confident, go down in size/up in difficulty. The prior to improve aim, the latter to improve movement.
If you can wrok to the point where you can eyeball Eagles and Vipers from maximum relative velocity between you and them, you are starting to get the hand of it, again just remember player ships are a great deal faster than the AI and will still take some more adjustment.
The advanced version of this tutorial would be to go and shoot the big vessels a few times until they deploy a fighter, thats your target. Try to kill the SLF whilst being shot at by the rest of its wing/its mothership and this will give you a small amount of basic experirnce against a difficult target, and with the pressure of several ships to "motivate" you into getting it done quickly.
If you have friends who also want to learn with you, make sure you fight one another on a regular basis, not only will this be more effective than fighting the AI and give you a better feeling for true PvP, but hopefully you will both be at a similar experience level meaning there is less chance of being put off due to harsh defeats.
o7 GLHF
