I've owned this game since release, and have finally gotten into it, sinking 100+ hours in a couple weeks. Loving it – aside from space combat. Having played Elite Dangerous a ton (and I'm sure you're all annoyed hearing the comparisons constantly) and being pretty damn good at combat from smaller agile ships to larger ones, NMS just isn't clicking with me?

I just got my 150 kill milestone, and I'm pretty sure I just hold 'S' and shoot for all of them. I've tried chasing and using different loadouts, but it doesn't matter, because the AI just does some crazy tight turn and flips on me, and their shield are back on in 0.5 seconds. I landed on cyclotron for shields and infraknife for hull because nothing has the RPM or velocity to break shield and do hull damage, but from what I've seen from searches here, pure infraknife is just OP and the way to go.

So am I doing something wrong, is this just it? Hold 'S' and shoot with infraknife? I'm not dogging on this game in any way, I just want to know if there's a way for the space combat to be more fun. I want to be able to chase and stay on a craft's tail while using different weapons, or loop or scissor out of someone chasing me. The AI seems like they can pull crazy maneuvers and then be simultaneously braindead, I either have a 0.25 timeframe to shoot, or they just fly straight.