Well, I went ahead and gave it a final try. Truly no dice.
This one was a salvage mission, so I thought I would roll up and get the cargo. It was the dark side of the planet, so I tried to go in stealthy and perhaps take the NPC's one by one.
No dice. They instadetected me for one, and for another, were all bunched in close, so I took another shot at direct combat. I managed to down a good number, but still got swarmed and deleted, seemingly without any option to do things differently.
I attempted to fire at them with my ship instead, only to be driven off myself as it seems my laser beams just wern't accurate enough.
I've decided to put the game down for now, but I need to have a hard think whether I should proceed with it. For me, the appeal of Elite is very much the freedom to play the game in the way you want - To pursue the activity you want to do.
However, certain activities seemingly have been made impossible to do, and those happen to include the ones I REALLY want to do. And that just takes away the entire appeal of a sandbox game. Jokes about "Elite isnt an FPS" aside, it's the sheer variety that pulled me in.
Tracking down wrecks, combing through salvage, sneaking into settlements to disable power or take out individuals. That all seems like a wonderful change of pace from ship flying. I simply couldnt play Elite ship only.
But right now, I am stuck. Every attempt to engage in combat leads to a game over screen, regardless of whatever tips I recieve from experienced players.
