in combat there are couple of things to remember.
1. If you are outmatched it is just fine to run. head for the little swirl icon. this is also known as a fail gate.
2. The fail gate can be destroyed. this is a good tactic if you want to keep a ship from escaping. But be careful because this tactic can also work against you if you're outmatched.
3. Hit-and-run tactics can sometimes work but most of the time they won't.
4. Circling around an enemy can allow all of your weapons to fire on the enemy.
5. Focusing on a single enemy can sometimes tip the balance in your favor.
6. Use asteroids and planets as cover when you are trying to recharge your shields or reloading weapons.
7.You can use power up that spaw on the battlefield to help yourself in the battle but be wary that your enemies can take them as well once the container has been broken.

if you encounter an enemy that has a part you want you can actually cause your enemies to drop that part. If you focus all of your firepower on that part it will break off and be recoverable. You can only do this to about 3 to 4 parts before their armor has taken too much damage and they are destroyed. Most of these parts that you knockoff of an enemy ship( depending upon their level) will usually be between one and three stars. It's a great way to level up your weaponry without having to buy parts at really high costs and disarming your enemy. My ship is level 80+ and I have probably only bought about 2 ship parts.if parts of your ship are blown off at the end of the battle if you don't want to have to worry about them being unrecoverable you can actually reattach them to your ship using the control key. It works just like shipbuilder. use your zoom out key to get a overhead appearance of your ship.

when you first start a game it is a good idea to explore the entire galaxy and grab all of the lore nodes. These can give you quite a bit of experience and some resources. You do not have to view them if you don't want to. Exploring new sectors also gives you a little bit of experience. After you get all of the Lore nodes and have explored all the sectors it is a good idea to start attacking bandits. Sometimes you get help but most of the time you're on your own when you face bandits. They are weak and don't give a lot of resources but they are good for combat experience and improving relationships with factions. From what I've seen all ships start out at a zero hate/like which is neutral and by attacking bandits you gain favor with everybody around.

An other way to level up quite easly is to join in battles between captains, especially the ones that already have a faction, if one of the captain is stronger of a couple of levels you wont need to fight at all, but you will get huge experience, free resources and ship parts for free.

To get free ship parts it's highly recomanded to focus the fire on the wings/sub-cores/noses/engines that you want to get from the enemy, since once the fight is won there is an high chance that those parts are scavangeable or present in the loot.

When you improve the relationships, from 15 to 20, with a certain faction you have the option to join them. This is can be a good idea because offer a certain protection from attacks of other ships since when you are attacked your allies will come and help you in the fight. You will be also entitled to scavange from the resources of the faction with less bad consequences.

How to improve relationship:
-Fighting pirates in the faction territory
-Fighting ships of other faction that are in war with your own
-Trading with the faction starbases
-Winning the arena chalanges in the faction starbases
-Offering parts of ship or Resources to the captain as tribute
-Joining in the fights on the side of the faction you want to improve relationship
-Destroying the raids that other faction do in the territory of your faction

!BE AWARE!:
the only way to improve relationship without damaging others are the trading, the arena, fighitng pirates (alone or on the side of someone)

it's a good idea to start your own faction but only if you have a strong ship. the reason for this is because as soon as you start your own faction all the other faction ships hate you.
by by starting your own faction you can generate income and have really low part costs. on my capital Starbase I have a 15% markup.


as you expand your empire you can assign your star bases to other members of your faction. By doing this you increase their friendliness toward you. They also pay you a small tribute thereby increasing the amount you get when you collect your stockpile. I have had it where I got 15,000 scrap, 200 goons and 150 rez. As you upgrade your star bases they get better parts and generate more stockpile income.

with ship building if you have more engines you will actually achieve a higher speed so you can close the distance between you and your enemy a lot faster. Though this can actually cause some problems. With more wings that is to say more combat parts you'll turn a lot faster but I find that if you have a slower turn rate you can actually fire on your enemies for longer with all of your weaponry.I usually find that being able to close the distance can actually help you a lot because when you're allies finally get into position you've already taken down the Shields quite a bit. Not to mention engines have a 360° firing area. it is always a good idea to have the maximum amount cores. This increases shields and armor and health. Even if you don't have good parts. A single core can usually change just how quickly your shields fail. You can get junk parts for free at the junkyardd And upgrading from there helps a lot.
for my ship I usually load my engines up with missiles or anti-missiles.and then on one of the sides of my ship I try to put just missiles. The other side I try to put all of my lasers and stuff like that. This way I don't have to worry too much about turning as I'm firing.

through experimentation with different ship designs I have decided that the closer your core parts are together the stronger your shields arehowever this does weaken your offensive capabilities. Though I find enemy ship layouts cause them to have weak shields which doesn't really matter if you lose a little bit of offense capability. I will continue to update this part of the guide as I experiment more with ship design.