Am currently entirely incapable of getting started. I repeatedly get slaughtered by asteroid fleets, and cannot get enough resources to afford any extra ships to avoid that.
In most cases, you die in seconds without any time to react, with a handful of exceptions.
I was able to win a handful of fights, enough to level up once, while I still had a starter fleet of a few ships. Then, I hit an asteroid fight which killed off all my ships, and the new ship was still unable to win any fights.
I am unable to mine enough Germanium to accomplish anything, mainly due to my keep losing any money I might have gathered, or any ships. Unlike vanilla, there are also no mini-fleets available for me to fight which do not slaughter me as well.
The main issue is that unless, presumably, you are of a far higher class, or have the boom-ship, you are entirely unable to avoid being surrounded, overloaded, and obliterated in seconds by multiple frigates and fighters, both of which are faster than you are.
I might be able to take on one, or maybe 2, but 3 is effectively impossible, and the sniper-frigates are impossible for me to counter. They overload your shield from way out of your range, even with significant shield boosting mods. While they might be killable solo (depending on whether or not your hull can take it while you shield-vent cycle and close the distance) if there is any other ships, it kills you.
Also, last time I tried to retreat, which failed miserably.
Any ideas?
Edit:
Managed to get a ship able to actually close and kill things, and have enough ships that I haven't lost this game yet. Brawler class + Melter on standard build. Seems to obliterate anything it hits, and burn drive lets you close in. Also seems to be effected by the +300 range beam booster.
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Navigation skill seems to have either a bugged tooltip or data. 1/1/2, 1/1/2, then 2/2/2. Actually could be intended, and level zero displays values for level 1, but unsure.
Some ships still lack varieties with full loadouts, such as the Phalanx class.