Hello Unwoundpath, my asphalt-clad friend.
Welcome to the asylum!
Regarding how to do better at playing Starfarer, I recommend reading the game's bundled instruction manual .PDF from start to finish. You need to become familiar not only with the quirks of initial battle deployment and subsequent tactical maneuvering, but also the quirks of firepower. Here's a few basic points to be guided by...
Four different flavors of damage: kinetic, high explosive, fragmentation and energy.
Each of the four comes in three different packages: missile, ballistic, and energy weapons.
These, in turn, are available in three sizes: small, medium and large.
Each kind of damage is more effective in some situations, and less effective in others. Exploit these differences. Not all weapons are created equal; even those within the same size class and dealing out the same sort of damage. You'll live or die by those choices of what to arm your ship (later,
ships) with.
Read all about flux. All sorts of activities will cause flux buildup on your ship. Too much flux is bad. Eventually you will need to actively vent it away because you may have too much flux for passive dissipation to handle. When you're venting, you're vulnerable. Defend against that, and make the most of it when an
enemy ship is venting.
There's lots more info on this forum to be guided by. Make use of it to the fullest.