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[Megas]

Supplies are another.  They are more expensive in early game then get less expensive later, barring spikes from occasional shortage.

[Cik]

OP maybe you should inform us about what exactly you are having trouble

the early game is not difficult as long as you know the sensor mechanics, which favor smaller, nimbler, military-style fleets over everything else. if you are burn 10 you should never be caught.

if you get destroyers or cruisers too early, before you are high level, then you will die because the enemy level 20 officers will catch you and tear you apart. but you know, don't do that.

[Sy]

He's been around here as long as I have and most of what he does is complain and ****post

welp, seems like others here agree with you on that. ^^

OP maybe you should inform us about what exactly you are having trouble

i think it's mainly the difficulty in battles that's the main problem here. just switching to easy difficulty, as Cycerin suggested, should help with that a lot though.

[Cik]

battles are easy, because if you play the game correctly you hold the strategic initiative 100%

if you cannot win, do not engage.

[Megas]

Could be the very start.  Player is in a single frigate, usually up against more than one ship.  Player's frigate is not very powerful, except maybe the Scarab.  Wayfarer is not a good fighter without skills, Centurion is just a tankier Hermes that eats too much, and Lasher, without skills and access to long-range weapons, is best used as a high-stakes melee fighter in a game that rewards kite-and-snipe.  Scarab is also a melee fighter with an overpowered ship system, but pays for it with angry Tri-Tachyon faction that kill on sight.

Of all of the available starter ships, Scarab is the only one that can easily disengage from fights, thanks to Temporal Shell.  The others probably cannot run away if they start losing (because they probably do not have enough top speed), and will probably die.

Newbies who are not completely familiar with controls and game mechanics will likely struggle even against a single opponent, let alone two or four.

[Mini S]

You can always add Nexerelin and start with a bigger fleet/level or be a part of another faction.

[Midnight Kitsune]

Midnight Kitsune might lack tact at times, but from all the time I have been around, he always has replied to me in a helpful way and never was rude towards me. His tolerance towards some things is just low and he seems like a person that speaks his mind. If you see though his replies around, they always are helpful and many times he goes out of his way to be extra detailed. He also hates specific mods, especially the ones that are broken and never really fixed or balanced XD

Awwwwww, thanks Weltall! Yeah, I've kinda lost my "tact" as you call it over the years. And while I'm not a coder or modder, I try to help out as much as I can to help keep the work off of the real modders and of course Alex!
And yes I do speak my mind about buggy, broken or OP mods as they also drags down the image of other high quality mods out there.

[Linnis]

The frustration sometimes is real. Early game is alot of fast frigates keeping distance from the slower ones. Battles become drawn out. The remedy right now is fighting fodder pirates untill higher levels and more ships in the fleets. Which is really not a solution but just a workaround.

Frgate vs frigate combat still remains dull and frustrating for the one with the slower ship.

[Sy]

Frgate vs frigate combat still remains dull and frustrating for the one with the slower ship.

there are a few things coming in 0.8 that will hopefully make this a bit less of an issue:
1) exploration will provide an alternative form of early-game progression, including chances to practice combat against weak automated drone ships.
2) players will be able to specialize into specific skills much earlier (rather than having to wait for enough separately gained aptitude points). going right into combat skills for a stronger flagship, or into industry for ship recovery to quickly build a cheap fleet, could help quite a bit to make battles easier.
3) crew levels are removed, all ships now have a baseline of 70% CR. while that doesn't help in battles directly, it removes one of the things that cause the inverted difficulty curve, with early-game ships currently only getting 1-3 deployments before they hit malfunction risk.

[Midnight Kitsune]

Frgate vs frigate combat still remains dull and frustrating for the one with the slower ship.

there are a few things coming in 0.8 that will hopefully make this a bit less of an issue:
1) exploration will provide an alternative form of early-game progression, including chances to practice combat against weak automated drone ships.
2) players will be able to specialize into specific skills much earlier (rather than having to wait for enough separately gained aptitude points). going right into combat skills for a stronger flagship, or into industry for ship recovery to quickly build a cheap fleet, could help quite a bit to make battles easier.
3) crew levels are removed, all ships now have a baseline of 70% CR. while that doesn't help in battles directly, it removes one of the things that cause the inverted difficulty curve, with early-game ships currently only getting 1-3 deployments before they hit malfunction risk.

One issue though is that being outnumbered and a newbie will hurt even more thanks to the coming E War fleet boosts

[Sy]

One issue though is that being outnumbered and a newbie will hurt even more thanks to the coming E War fleet boosts

i don't think EW comes into play in early-game battles, since it requires either an AI admiral with the skill, or capture points. and in the latter case, it really just replaces the old advantage of being able to hold all or most capture points due to superior numbers.

iirc, Alex even mentioned that pirate admirals will use it only in really big late-game fleets, if at all, precisely because pirates are meant to be easy to fight (relatively speaking) even in large numbers -- could be i mixed that up with something else though.

[Megas]

Frgate vs frigate combat still remains dull and frustrating for the one with the slower ship.

That's just it.  Non-Scarab options are slow-as-molasses, except maybe Lasher with Safety Override.  SO Lasher has other problems - terrible peak performance.  Also terrible shot range, but the default configuration already has terrible shot range (not that it matters since Lasher has trouble supporting other weapons with its mediocre flux stats).  Speaking of slow, Centurion might be able to train three guns on a target, but it needs to be fast to do so.  I am not sure an unskilled Centurion can turn quickly enough to maintain optimal (and incredibly picky) facing toward an enemy.  If it cannot turn fast enough to keep up with the enemy, then it gets stuck with only two guns to fire, and its attack power is no better than a lowly civilian shuttle.  At least Hermes and Kite have a mobility system and does not cost as much to deploy.

Wolf was an easier start (until Scarab came along) because it had moderate speed and phase skimmer.  Graviton beam and tactical lasers will fry small pirates (with terrible flux stats) slowly, or pulse laser/blaster with some PD laser can pound on pirates with shorter-ranged weapons (like LMGs or assault chaingun).

I do not consider unskilled Hound a viable combat ship.  No shields is a fatal weakness due to ion cannons, missiles, and long-range beams used by the enemy.  It is a good freighter, due to being able to stack speed mods and outrun everything pirates use.  Probably the best starter ship for a no-combat, trader run.

[majorfreak]

Exactly. The superior kiting ability of the AI forces the PC to power creep to bigger ships that could outlast the performance time of smaller pirate frigates and pick the pesky ones off in the end phase where the enemy's CR is minimal.  Which, of course, means the pirate fleet size scales with the PC's. Ad infinitum.

The irony is if Alex simply made all the ships swarm the PC you would easily get into situations where you're simply overwhelmed and trounced multiple times and the average, reasonable, customer simply hits that uninstall button.

(my personal opinion is irrelevant at this juncture. I'm guilty of tweaking the settings.json and the SS+ config file multiple times, plus adding mods to suit my taste, along with copious use of the console when i wanted to respec my officers...or play with that cool 'ability' mod)

[Megas]

Assuming player survives the early game, it does not take very long before player grows powerful and can kite the AI.  Of course, that is quite an assumption; newbies or simply less skillful gamers may not overcome it, and the game is effectively over for those who cannot quickly.  Slowly building up a fleet and then losing everything in one battle gone horribly wrong is effectively a "Game Over" or reload moment.

Fleets do not scale.  It is up to the player to avoid big fleets.  Not always easy as it sounds thanks to sensors and other features.  There is a reason why emergency burn has earned the nickname "gank burn", something any fleet can do.  A level 1 player that tries to fight an endgame fleet will die.  Of course, as players level, they need to attack bigger fleets to maintain leveling speed or else they stagnate.

The irony is if Alex simply made all the ships swarm the PC you would easily get into situations where you're simply overwhelmed and trounced multiple times and the average, reasonable, customer simply hits that uninstall button.

By endgame, the warmongering player wants this!  This means player gets sucked into a 100+ ship super-simulator death fleet that his overpowered battleship can destroy singlehandedly, possibly without hull damage.  Here, the player can pay CR deployment cost once instead of seven or so times he had fought each fleet separately.  Unfortunately, your AI fleet cannot handle overwhelming odds and will die, which means you solo the entire fleet with your one overpowered battleship, or chain-flagship your fleet one ship at a time.

But yeah, an unprepared or unwary player will be crushed by so many enemy ships.