First of all - welcome CMDR.
shouldn't the first experience of combat be rewarding and enticing instead of rage-quit inducing?
Umm... both YES and NO.
YES - because you could be hooked with how great, entertaining and rewarding combat is, wanting you more of that which would make you play for longer than a aweek a nd then dump the title.
NO - because it could make false feeling. With easy and rewarding tutorial you would face true combat where issues happen and without knowing how to cope with them would make you feel cheated as you had experience different from tutorials.
Unlike other games, ED combat is heavily imbalanced and there are many factors that impact final outcome. Your rank vs target rank, your ship vs target ship, your modules and power management. Engineering (which alone has massive impact and alters combat heavily) and target pilot rank. There is no simple equation that says "if Sidewinder/Adder/Keelback/any other small ship, then easy prey". YOu can kill easily harmless Anacondas while being killed within seconds by elite Hauler.
At the very least, Harmless opponents should NOT have their shields come back online after a few seconds... Talk about kicking a new player in the teeth, over and over and over.
And after 45 minutes (snip) he just high-wake frameshifts out.
Sadly, lack of experience shows. Nothing to be ashamed, some things come with time. We here already know that knocked off shield regenerate with time. So if target manages to avoid you for some time he will regain his shields. Same applies to you - when you loose shields wait a bit till they regenerate.
One exception, and many CMDRs fall into this, is what I call "IF-THEN" bad programming. Which, sadly, is a result of P2P instead of central server multiplayer design and lack of consistency in the world. Without going into much details - essentially process of dropping into instance (exit Supercruise at the station) means that every NPC is "created" for that instance. If you're in combat with one and he manages to wake out - for you he goes Supercruise or jumops to diferent system - continues to exist with all states (HP, shields, ammo count). For game this NPC is deleted with his states and kept as a "record" that there was NPC.
If you manage to stumble upon him (either pull out of SC or being interdicted by him), game creates new instance with NEW NPC. That's why we have documented (and ranted) stories how NPCs "magically" regenerate shields in a matter of seconds, renegerate lost armor, even change ship type and weapon loadout mid-flight. It's because game lacks consistency and creates and deletes NPC on the go. Re-creating one given NPC falls under IF-THEN rule.
IF instance with player, THEN spawn NPC
Without consistency we don't get the same NPC, with same state (hull, shield damage) but entirely new one.
Sounds like massive bug.mistake or call it as you like. ED is full of those "features".
Anyway - ED is a game for specific kind of player. It's not faast and quick for nice 30 minute evening session to wind down after busy work day. It's not a shooter where you take bigger (than oponent) ship and blast everything out of the sky. Here you work your a...ahem, bottom out for small pay off and one small mistake, miscalculation and all of your effort is lost.
Sounds awful but don't get the wrong idea -ED can be great game. Provided you approach it the proper way. What is proper way - this you must discover yourself.
