Ok, a bit of a late reply, but still...
Hi, I found frontier easy to get to grips with but I could never get to grips with FFE combat. I can guarentee that I will be killed on starting a new game within 3 battles.
That's quite good, actually, before I learned the ropes I could guarantee that I would be killed within 3 seconds from start of the first one.
How on earth am I supposed to play this game??? Im taking my ship to Tititan system. I find myself furious at how hard the game instantly is. I used to play frontier and barely ever lose a battle.
Because for all good things about Frontier its AI was *DUMB*. It barely maneuvered and couldn't hit the broad side of a gas giant with a laser (missiles were another thing, it used them with uncanny malice and cunning, far better than an average player).
FFE AI actually has a pretty good aim and moves around more.
Add the fact that you usually get combat alert mere kms from the enemies and if you don't know what you're doing and do it fast, you're meat.
The key thing is to evade first, try to get any clue about the situation immediately after. The very first thing is moving out of the line of fire and chances are just firing you main thruster will accomplish that for a second or two. Then it's just the game of coming up close without getting killed exploiting enemy inability to turn fast enough if you pass really close, not overshooting and popping them from the direction where they can't direct fire (rear, sides, top or bottom).
The only bed things are maneuvering assist that fires thrusters on its own to manage inertia, but gets in the way if you try to do something advanced or extreme (like chasing or escaping) and missiles that have improved homing AI. They are still dodgeable (I've seen a tutorial vid by a guy dodging five of them at once while explaining the flight techniques involved), but much harder to evade than those in Frontier.
And whats with the text overlaying the console whilst on the map?!?!? What a load of old poop!!
The game was released in what could be rather charitably described as mid-alpha stage. Quite a lot of things about it are not-quite-there.
