Well, you still are.
There are several common problems with FE2 combat:
1. flight modes are counterintuitively named - for everything but near-surface flight and leisurely manoeuvring around space you'll want to use engines off mode, which disables computer control over ship's engines (there is evidently still some degree of FBW, as your ship is still excellently stabilized) and lets you use manual overrides for main thruster and retrorockets.
So called manual mode is worse than useless in deep space combat, as you can only set your speed relative to currently dominant mass in the system, and in space combat all that you interests you is your speed relative to the other vessel. This means that in "manual" mode your thrusters will be firing wildly depending on your orientation.
Your mains will be doing full burn all the time, unless you happen to face direction of travel and going at set speed or faster (then the retros will fire instead and refuse to shut up). In addition to that your lateral thrusters (side, top, or bottom) will keep firing if you aim sideways because the ship will dutifully try to achieve set speed forward by cancelling lateral momentum while building up forward velocity.
In short trying to fight in manual mode is probably best described as trying to do precision shooting here on Earth while being carried around by a raging tornado. If that's the only experience you have of Frontier's combat it's no wonder you think it sucks.
2. Even in engines off mode you need to be careful. There is no friction in space. Firing engines in space doesn't keep up speed, it keeps up acceleration. This means that when you're pursuing someone who is slower (which means has less acceleration) you won't be approaching towards them at steady rate, but will be accelerating towards them and collide or overshoot unless you actually control the approach rate. Remember that you won't slow down on your own and for inert target it will take you at least the same amount of time to lose speed that it took to build it up and that's if you decelerate using mains while flying backwards - 2-3 times longer otherwise. Be gentle on the controls and you won't joust.
3. In space there is no relation between the direction your going and direction in which you're looking or even thrusting. If you have built up sideways momentum no amount of forward or rear thrust will cancel it out, you will need to thrust at least partially sideways. This means that with lateral movement it's fairly easy to start thrusting at target while keeping it in the crosshair and fail to come closer because you had significant lateral momentum and are now using your mains to essentially force an orbit around your target instead of approaching it. The proper way is to thrust to the side instead.
You can combine thrust too - for example, if target escapes to the left you either aim to the left of it and fire mains to approach while cancelling sideways momentum if it moves away or closes in too slowly, or or aim to the right of it and fire retros to slow down if you're also coming in too fast - remember to watch the distance and be prepared to switch!
You can always just take a few tons of rubbish and a shieldgen (spare targets and provisions for when you inevitably run into them), fly it away somewhere where you won't be fined for illegal dumping then use it as a dummy target for maneuvering practice. Remember, rubbish containers are inert, any jousting or other uncontrollable behaviour is YOUR fault.
Unless you can do whatever you want around a rubbish container floating in space you have no dimmest clue about flying your ship and are simply in no position to criticize Frontier's gameplay.
I might just be stupid but trying to plot a course in the map screen on FFE was harder than flying the ship (which also felt wrong).
And what's so hard about plotting the course?
Because I don't understand.
Others have mentioned you can easily find tutorials on youtube etc, but to my mind this IS the best tutorial on how to deal with the Newtonian physics thing in Frontier and FFE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UMIbdN0UFE
If after that you just can't get a handle on combat in the last two Elite games, then you really are probably just an 'airplanes in space' guy (so never get a real job flying in space!)
Great video, short and to the point.
Shame about using Eagle though, you can't see lateral thrusters firing on it in external view. Viper, Adder, Cobra or Asp would have been better.
