Because of this combat is very hit and miss. The poor controls make dogfighting chaotic, and combined with the slow moving projectiles it makes it very hard to actually hit anything. Shields are far too powerful at the start of the game, and you will only be able to take out the weakest enemy craft at first. Given that your ship is fairly slow and your afterburners take all the energy from your shields, you can't even run away from bigger ships. Later on though the weapons become too powerful.
Plasma throwers are expensive, but they rip through enemy shields effortlessly.
You can comfortably take on four or five ships at once, and your biggest risk is colliding with one of them. Scanner Force Navigation is also next to impossible thanks to the substandard scanners. You'll need to buy two or three expensive upgrades before you can find your away around a system easily. You can't tell what anything is until you are within scanning range of it, which is generally just a few kilometres. Even worse, your radar readout zooms in and out uncontrollably depending on how close you are to the nearest ship.