Combat is skill based, in the form of piloting tactics and hand eye coordination, it's really not much different to a typical FPS game it's just much slower, players need to understand the ships and the flight models for each, the most dominant weapons are hitscan based (pules/beam), FD needs to balance weapons more, so that all feel effective/viable! but still retain unique qualities (FD go look at the weapons in quake), and while gimballed/turreted weapons do provide some autoaim, they can be cancelled out via chaff, this means that players will need to use hand eye coordination to be accurate with fixed weapons. One thing missing is the typical maps that players would need to learn in a typical FPS.
Other aspects of game require less skill and more logic thinking, but retain things such as the ability to fly a ship.
I don't believe it's to arcade, however I don't mind more SIM like direction. The FA-OFF is great and should not be nerf. Actually an eagle can beat an Anaconda if the pilot is skilled enough.
Skills are not just flying, it's also how to setup your ship.
I don't know what the G-forces are in ED's cockpits, however implementing a G-Force meter and some game mechanics around that could be fun.
If you beat Anaconda in Eagle then Anaconda pilot must be 4 years old child it is not possible. You can show me in your Eagle beat my Vulture with only 2 hard points and i am 100% sure you can last no more than 20 sec.
But like you said if the pilot have no skill at all you can theoretically beat Anaconda for surebut this will be very very rare situation if we talking about PVP not PVE.
My Vulture ship is my best ship at this moment but i can imagine how scary Anaconda is if you chose right equipment.
Experience is the main factor in this game, i think thats seperate to skill - the only place that really serves you is high end PvP the rest is just do you know the game?