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[Dexy]

My attempts go something like this: I leave the sector to make some money with exploration or personal bounties (usually with some success) but it doesn't take long and I end up in an unexpected and unavoidable fight where I'm outnumbered and lose everything. Then I rebuild, and soon the same thing happens again.

Should I field only frigates until I have steady income? (because frigates can actually flee from combat)

Should I get the sensor and stealth skills and use go dark much more often?

[Destructively Phased]

Savescum. Savescum all the way.

While you can survive a bad set of circumstances and it can be fun to try and win a fight when the odds are against you, it's worthwhile mashing f5 whenever you finish a trip in and out of the coreworlds.

If this is not how you'd like to the play the game, there's a couple of bits to help. Phase ships have a far lower sensor profile, so you can see enemy fleets before they see you. Buy frieghters without the civilian hull mod, this increases the sensor profile (hence enemies see you first). Frigate sized support vessels tend to be best as they can actually escape should they have be deployed for a retreat, meaning that any losses should be lower.

Finally, try to practice winning a retreat scenario. During a retreat the AI will deploy a good chunk of it's frigates on the left and right, leaving it's destroyers and cruisers without escort. Wheel around swarm the bigger ships while you have the numbers advantage. Just keep the civillian ships off to the side.

And mash f5.

[Thaago]

There are a bunch of options for reducing your sensor profile to avoid those fights:

Install the militarized conversion on ALL civilian ships, no exceptions. This will raise your burn speed, cut their sensor profile in half, and double their sensors.
Install the Insulated Engine Assembly on your largest ships to half their sensor profile.
Remember to turn off your transponder!
Turn off sustained burn in very dangerous systems.

You can make a fleet of frigates and fast transports to usually be able to escape, but be aware that in terms of... well pretty much everything... frigates are inferior and you will not be able to win many fights.

Probably the most important skill for getting out of trouble however is Navigation 3. Being able to transverse jump in and out of systems NOT at the main jump points removes like 95% of the ganks that can happen to you (and makes you get places faster).

[Alex]

If you're not doing this already: make sure you turn your transponder off when you're outside the core worlds or in hyperspace or just far away from any patrols. Having it on makes you a target and makes you visible from very far, so pirates and such can make a beeline for you before you even see them.

And, yes, definitely save often. Don't be afraid to pause (to give you some time to evaluate the situation) and use emergency burn if necessary, too.

[Algro]

Do I see a fellow Ironman player? If you are, you better not select the mode because the game is still unstable and I never reload unless the game crashed (You know, the intended way to play the game) so I'm basically playing Iron mode

Here are some tips on surviving the early game:

1) Wolf class frigates are the way to go, they are the best escapers in a retreat scenario. Make sure they have long-range weapons and they will almost live forever until being completely outgunned.
2) Save every time you dock on a port, it should be enough saves to keep progress.
3) Gain the favor of someone and start massing your fleet in the storage, only use it when the fleet is self-sufficient or just enough to kill any random large pirate armadas (This would be ~2 carriers, a battleship, and ~4 Frigate or corvettes depending on your setup (this is the safe estimate))
4) When in hyperspace, always turn off your transponder (0.9a gives you the choice to open it when entering an occupied jump gate), it basically doesn't make you into a glowing steal from me beckon
5) Get all your noncombat ships to equip the unstable engine mod, it will help a lot when escaping
6) Be ready to use emergency burns whenever something gets too close for comfort
7) Get cash through easy bounty hunting or just scavenge/scan missions, they are the safe route to riches.
Find and get an Apogee for me, and help yourself by getting one, no really I NEED one.

Remember not to get a colony until you can beat the smallest pirate station (Which is really hard early on) because they will haunt your first colony.
This should be enough to get you on track (The Ironman way of doing things at least)

[Dexy]

Do I see a fellow Ironman player?

Yes.

I'm going to try a wolfpack then. Any tips for getting those long range weapons?

Remember not to get a colony until you can beat the smallest pirate station (Which is really hard early on) because they will haunt your first colony.

Good to know. I haven't gotten that far yet.

[Schwartz]

Not all fights are unavoidable. Not all unavoidable fights are death sentences.

For the first time, I'm actually playing more or less without savescumming this time around. Had a Luddic Path deathball run into me by chance out in hyperspace, and I thought "Hell, maybe they'll talk." And they did. They just wanted a tithe. I used to play the game very mechanically and basically just never tried this. 10k is no sweat off my back.

I will reload occasionally if I feel I can turn a fight around. These can be the most fun. I also started putting speed boosts on my logistics ships so that I can actually try outrunning an enemy.

Lastly, you can hang close to contested worlds in hyperspace and pick off pirates for bounty, usually with the help of allies.

I feel Iron Man is too harsh, since a ***-up happens easily with fleet maneuvering; with catching and being caught. These are just technical mistakes, and it'd be a pain to have to suffer through it every time. But that aside, the game can be played pretty much straight these days.

[Goumindong]

OK so there are a lot of tools to use

1) Sensor Profile minimization. Your sensor profile is equal to a base value plus the sum of the sensor profiles of your 5 largest ships. In general a civilian hull increases your sensor profile by one ship size and Insulated Engine Assembly reduces your sensor profile by one ship size and otherwise all ships have the same sensor profile if they're the same ship size. So in order to minimize profile you want to install IEA or Militarized Subsystems (or both) on every ship of the largest size in your fleet. The exception is Phase Ships because phase ships have no sensor profile.

2) Running Dark: Turning off your transponder reduces your sensor profile.. As does going dark. A fleet that is looking for you will look as if you followed your last path. So if you're just spotted you can go dark and burn at 90 degree angle. You will usually avoid them. Going dark and being stationary in an asteroid field or debris field will also take your sensor profile down to almost zero.

3) Emergency Burn. This can also be used to catch fleets. But E burning makes you fast AND agile and so smaller fleets cannot catch you. In general if an enemy fleet attempts to interdict then e-burning will get you out of their interdiction range before it goes off(unless you're slow on the trigger) at which point you're too far away to be engaged.

4) Jump away: Fleets will follow you through jump points. But they're generally a bit slower than you giving you time to burn away (emergency or otherwise). Additionally if you have the "transverse jump" skill you can jump away at any point and enemies won't be able to follow you. This does stop you, but if you're dark and in an asteroid field you've probably got time. You can also jump through nascent gravity wells with that skill and enemies will not be able to follow you.

5) Colonize: Colonies can provide steady income and are pretty stable once they're up and running. They require some baby sitting but eventually you should have a colony that can make money for you and easily protect itself from more or less any threat. Once you're there you basically cannot lose because the colony will backstop losses with income.

[Algro]

I'm going to try a wolfpack then. Any tips for getting those long range weapons?

This will take some time, but generally you need to watch out for them in every market you go to. They normally appear in large numbers(5~15) or not at all, so it's best practice to check the market everytime you dock somewhere. And strore them somewhere you normally go to, perferraby a colony b/c It's free.

And about colonys.... My capital with every defence maxed out had a income of 120k. But the other factions didn't like me dominating their market share very much and in two months four different faction sent expaditions to it. The station was wreaked on the third one and the last one has taken over the sector. My net balance is now -100k because it just had to get the megaport. 150 days of -100k income, help.

[Thaago]

I think for early game ships you can't go wrong with Hammerheads because they do extremely well with cheap weaponry. 2x Heavy Mortar, 2x light dual autocannon (or railguns/needlers on a lucky black market find) and some missiles will tear pirates to pieces.

Or, if you can get converted Hangers and extended missile racks, you can go for a (D) fleet of Enforcers and spam ordinance. Haven't tried it yet this version but I suspect its ok.

[Dexy]

Still cannot get past the early game.

I lose fleets when misjudging or playing poorly, but many of the losses have to do with how frequently I encounter superior hostile forces in a situation that is hard to escape from.

[TaLaR]

... Going dark conflicts with the need to keep a transponder on.

... Having any slow civilian ships (tankers, freighters) or a destroyer in the fleet makes it so that any superior force that catches me will just destroy them.

You only need to keep transponder on in civilized systems. And occasionally in Hyperspace next to them (though getting caught by patrol in Hyperspace is rare).

You should be very cautious about dropping fleet speed, so that you can beat fleets of same speed.
For speed 7 you want a proper combat Capital. Cruiser(s) for 8. DE(s) 9. Otherwise stick to frigates at 10.
Then again, I did run a degraded engines Hammerhead (speed 8, got from tutorial) early in this campaign and it was manageable too. But generally degraded engine ships are a big no.

[Elijah]

I'd suggest focusing on exploration and trade at the beginning, they are the biggest moneymakers for smaller fleets, especially if you're happy to smuggle some drugs/organs, you make a lot of money (pirates have become the biggest market this update )

[Algro]

Try getting:

4+ wolves or anything faster than 150 (Or any of them rare high tech frigates)
3+ drams (that small fuel tank/ship thing) + unstable engines (Add surveying equipment as a bonus if you have it)
Any number of fast combat frigates with the burn ability
The result should be 10 minimum base burn speed (11/12 if you augment your engines)

With these, it should be very easy to escape any situation (Full retreat at the beginning of any retreat). At most you'll lose 1-2 fuel tanks depending on how fast their frigates are.

This scouting fleet should allow you to do:
Go across the entire map twice with max fuel
Bounty at the 50k price range
Any derelict scan mission
Survey missions based on your crew size
Get a commission for the sweet 50k salary per month (At least for Tri)

Note: you cannot upgrade to anything larger than a frigate b/c they will be too slow. If you want to play larger ships, remember to mass a large enough number of them to face 200k bounty in storage and prepare beforehand with backup cash. This is your best bet at not losing everything in a single pirate trap.

[sicksock]

I spent most of today climbing out of the 'very hard' spacer start on ironman in 0.9 so I'll add my two cents worth.

1) Visit bars: Bar missions seem tailored to your current fleet, so even starting as the broken down, weaponless kite you will get very profitable missions shipping around trivial amounts of goods.

2) Invest in skills that help you in the short term: This depends on what you want to be doing, as a rule there are few skills which stand out as 'mandatory early picks' (ehem fleet logistics 2) but otherwise anything which you think will help you in the short term is worth taking. Things like increased salvage, colony or fleet management can wait until you're actually winning fights to salvage.

3) RUN AWAY:"If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him" -  Sun Tzu. This cannot be stressed enough, throughout the entire game you must always pick your fights. Even the most beefy late game super-fleet will lose if it's caught out of position. Speed is vital to this early, if you're faster than your opponent than 9/10 times you can avoid him and his buddies interdiction pulses. Militarized subsystems is great for this as it will both speed up your slower ships and reduce their profile, meaning you have more time to respond to threats.

4) Embrace the grind. Early to mid game should be focused on acquiring money, supplies and ships at as low risk as possible, again bar missions are your friend (also there's one independent station in a TT system which constantly wants heavy weapons, and the best producer of them in in system). As a rule I avoid the center of the sector just because of the threat of superfast ludd kamikaze fleets.

5) Horde everything: Don't sell any weapons or ships ever. Store them at the abandoned terraforming station or somewhere else easily accessible. Early game it might seem easier to just sell them and move on especially Dmod salvages, but once you lose a fight (and you will) you will relish every broken down frigate you can get your hands on.