As others said before, learning to fly takes time. FAON didn't take long for me, but FAOFF took 1-2 years.
However, if you are willing to unlock guardian weapons and get some engineering done you can make builds of medium ships that can solo cyclops and kill the glaives without knowing how to cold orbit, and won't be a target practice for the interceptor / swarm such as big ships can be. Below are the builds I made for a friend of mine who is a beginner pilot (FAON with gimballed weapons) and managed to solo cyclops near stations in FAON (still, the more faoff you can add into your flying, the more fun you'll have imo.)
(1) get a krait mk2 - yes the chieftain is much easier to fly and there are builds for that or the challenger
(2) get a class 3 turreted long range beam laser with thermal vent (in middle spot on top)
(3) get 2 class 3 gimballed enhanced AX multicannons (glaives / to subtarget hearts) in the 2 remaining C3 slots (azimuth is better, you may need 6A armored thermal spread PP)
(4) get 2 class 2 guardian weapons of your choice: 2 modified guardian shard cannons or 2 modified guardian plasma chargers, or 2 (unmodified) guardian gauss cannons, depending on your preference. I prefer the modifided shard cannons for their low distro draw because I fly small ships (I use 3 on my icourier with gun-sight-mode in right panel under 'ship' tab set to 'trailing' so I can tell where it shoots for the hearts, but you can use leading to subtarget the hearts as long as you had scanned the interceptor with the enhanced[2km range] xeno scanner). Both the gauss and charger have to be charged up first, whereas the shard is just point and shoot. The modified guardian weapons have a lot of ammo, which is nice. If you plan to go to a Titan, then you need to engineer the guass with RAM TAH to withstand the caustic field.
Basically to kill cyclops reliably and defend against the glaives witht the two class 3 multis, you can use these krait mk2 build (caustic sink or SFN in 4th utility slot are up to you). If you don't fit a SFN, make sure you toggle FAOFF on right before the goid activates its shutdown field so that you drift. Keep on repairing the C5 MRP after you get hit, and repair the 2 guardian weapons aftert you kill the glaives with the multis. You can add military heavy duty bulkheads for extra hitpoints, but you will be much more sluggish. I like the speed, up to you. The builds below are fast, barely, but can escape even a Basilisk if you use silent running, heatsinks, turn towards it when it chases you and boot past it.
AX conflict zone:
At a station where you can repair / rearm
Create 2 fire groups FG1 and FG2.
In FG1 put 2 multis on '1' and 2 guardian weps on '2'
In FG2, put the beam laser on '1' and whatever else on '2' (like repair / caustic sink).
With both caustic sinks and repair module, you may need FG3 as well.
Your can try this zoom-and-boom strategy that worked for my friend. I assume you know the 'states' of an interceptor, what a heart is, when a heart is exposed, ... .
1. Use the beam laser to stay safe and cold and watch the swarm. Even if you use FAON, best to do this part in FAOFF in reverski.
2. Use your enhanced xeno scanner to scan the goid (must stay under 2km, point at it and hold the fire button, can be tricky at first).
3. After the goid's shield decays (you can see this in the bottom left), pop a heatsink and boost toward the cyclops. Under 2.5 km (preferebly under 2km) shoot it as close to the center as possible in close succession (to beat its regen rate) with the guardian weapons. Boost-flip, rinse and repeat until a heart is exposed. With the cyclops you won't need to be very accurate and won't have to be very close, basically keep shooting it between 2-3km.
4. Once its heart is exposed, subtarget(!) the exposed heart and shoot it with the 2 multicannons, keep popping heatsinks as needed.
You can do the zoom-boom part in faoff, just stabilize the ship first, toggle on faoff and boost towards it.
Alternatively, you can try this in FAON: use a mouse for pitch/yaw and bind the 'Disable Relative Mouse' under SHIP CONTROLS -> MOUSE CONTROLS to a key.
Stay in FAON but toggle the disable-relative-mouse key. This will let your ship gently rotate vertically or horizontally and may be easier to aim while you boost by the goid.
Basically most of the time just float in FAOFF and boost towards the goid. When you lose control, toggle on FAON.
If you must add a shield, use a biweave reinfored or enhanced low power blueprint both with lo-draw experimental. the swarm will have an easier time to hit you as it buzzes around, and do phasing damage, whereas with no shield they will miss you most of the time. If you aggrod the swarm (so they target you specifically and suicide-bomb you), you best leave, you can try to reset them by flying thru them at a suitable moment).
