To be fair, I’d wager 80% of fights are determined before the ships even meet. Loadouts are far more important than twitch-reflexes as evidenced by the number of players that are consistently successful putting the flagship on autopilot the whole game.
That being said, good piloting makes a good ship great and a great ship ridiculous. I’m pretty good at piloting but there are folks that can wipe whole fleets with frigates. To me, it comes down to positioning, not over-extending, exploiting the AI’s tendencies, and again, carefully constructed loadouts.
Flux management is paramount but so is being willing to take hits on hull when the occasion calls for it. If you have speed, you control the engagement (it’s like having the wind gauge in the age of sail). If you’re bigger and stronger, you tend to have a range advantage. So range and speed become the great fulcrums on which most battles hinge, though any ship that can instantly win a flux war (i.e. flux free missiles) can instantly win a single engagement. Sometimes that’s all you need to snowball a fight.
Gah. Makes me want to write a tutorial but I don’t have time to do a video.