I'll post more here later but anyone can chime in. I'm no expert but these might help a newbie as the learning curve is somewhat higher for this than most other space fliers.

Combat:

1) Practice flying as much as you can before getting in a real fight. The game will force a few fights on you pretty quick but until you are facing more than a few bad guys, you should do ok. Learn to strafe while rolling, the AI can't follow this if you are moving fast enough.

2) LDS toggle: Unless you are a purist and don't think this should have made it into the game, abuse the LDS drive. A quick manual on/off toggle will give you a speed of 1000 in whatever direction you are facing. If at all possible do not fight in a LDSi field. Using the LDS toggle "trick" gives you a huge advantage over the enemy ships. This is also a great way to dodge missiles.

3) I strongly suggest learning to fly without flight assist as much as you can. Think of flight assist as "brakes" cus that pretty much what it is.

4) Throttle control. IF you have a hotas or js throttle either don't use it or set it to the forward/back thrusters and use controlled burns. Trust me you'll be more maneuverable.

5) Power management makes a huge difference in the characteristics of ship systems. Full engines makes your ship turn and accelerate much better, while full weapons will give you a massive volley. Keep in mind you'll turn like a slug so line up with full engines (on their six if you can) and go full weapons before hitting with all guns. Switch back to full engines or shield if taking fire (shields are very useful when facing gunstars).



Piracy

1) Locations and tactics: flat out easiest method early game is to play story missions until you get emails about marauders. Go camp out near Samarkand (or wherever really) and wait for distress calls. Quickly head there but turn off autopilot as soon as you see targets. Watch the fireworks from 30+ clicks and when the baddies leave go tag the loot for Jafs. Sure you'll feel like a vulture but hey, it's a pirates' life.




I'll add some more later.

Here's what works for me:

-Bind the turret fighter order controls to an easy-to-reach place. (I use one of the hat switches on my TM HOTAS Cougar to do so.) The reason for this is that I find docked turret fighters to make excellent PBCs, especially since I can stick to full engine power and keep the target lined up. Unfortunately, they tend to be a bit missile-happy for the first few engagements and there's no more room for missile launchers on the tug once you have two turret fighters (or anything more than a quad light PBC, for that matter), but my combat style boils down to dodging missiles like a madman, getting on an enemy's six (very easy with the LDS cancel), and pummeling it to death with PBCs where its shields can't protect it. Good thing PBCs never run out of ammo, given how many ships you'll often be up against.

Another reason is that if you're about to pirate from a big ship with escorts, lining yourself up behind one of the escorts and ordering your turret fighters to pounce on it will kill the target before it even has a chance to react, which will make your life much easier when you deal with the rest of the escorts.

-Because every ship repairs itself gradually, you want to make your kills quick, before they have a chance to heal, and keep your distance when you've taken heavy damage.

-My preferred energy management boils down to full engines, almost all the time. Switch to full weapons when you have a PBC firing solution and hammer away until the target outmanuevers you, then switch back to full weapons. (Exception: Turret fighters. I don't think your energy settings affect them one bit, so it might be best to stick to full engines if that helps them keep firing on your target.) I only used full shields in that one damn gunstar disarming mission if I didn't make it to the next destination in time, before they went hostile again and started firing, though I may find uses for it in later missions.

-Throttle levers are only useful for controlling LDS speed, or if you want some cruise control. Otherwise, use thruster overrides at all times, especially during combat.

-The reason why you want to turn off flight assist/inertial compensation is that it makes it more difficult to fly faster. Speed is what will keep you alive, especially when dodging missiles (that knock off 20% hull with each hit on the tug and are spammed at you like crazy). If you need to change direction, use the LDS cancel if possible.

-If an enemy's heavily damaged, keep a close eye on how they manuever and ESPECIALLY their speed. The HUD will tell you if they're going into LDS, and the instant you see them do so, make sure to fire off an LDSi missile. (They're the only weapon in the game with a hotkey, and for very good reason.) Also make sure to not get caught in said missile's range yourself, because the game's much more difficult without the ability to LDS cancel.

Piracy
Whenever you see a Megatransporter coming out an L-point quickfire an LDSI-misslie on it.
This will reset the freighters speed to zero and the following freighter/patrols will crash into it, destroying the freighter(s) an leave the pods to be raided.
You can also fly to the emergency calls and let the transporters get destroyed, picking up the pieces afterwards.

Weapons
I pretty much always use Gatling or Assault cannons because they deal the most damage up close.
My preference are energy weapons, i dont use dogfighting missiles at all.

Flying
My power setting is almost always balanced, since you get diminishing returns for high power settings anyway. Plus I dont want to have to choose between shields and speed.
Also I always fly with the flight assistant on, and alternate between straight controls and strafing.

Ship
Try to get to the Advanced Patcom as soon as possible, with the new ship the difficulty will drop steeply.
Heavy Corvette... way too sluggish, not useful at all.

Ooo, that first one is sneaky! Gonna have to try that out. For the second one, I usually let the baddies damage the transport to the point that it drops pods, then I go in guns-a-blazin'. Kinda feel sorry for those digital independent traders. : D The Marauders will completely ignore the player until you shoot at them, so it's easy to line up behind them for a couple quick kills once the pods start flying. I do it this way, too. Thrust override works just fine, and you only need to let off the override key to get back to arcade-style flight. About the only time I turn off the flight controls is when presented with a stealth mission and you want to fly to a target without using thrusters. Not sure if this makes any difference to being spotted, but it's what I do.

WRT power, I normally go balanced unless a specific situation dictates otherwise. For instance, in the gunstar docking mission where you need to land on each one to deactivate it, I hotkey to full thrust right after undocking - this will get you to the next gunstar faster. Once I press the dock key, I'll switch to full shields since speed doesn't make a difference at that point as you're pretty much a sitting duck during that automatic maneuver. There are a couple cases where it's useful to boost weapon power but I seldom do so.

And yeah, the heavy corvette is a bit of a slug. The advantage is firepower so it's useful against capital ships or when you need a varied missile loadout. I like to carry a fairly large number of remote missiles so that requires a bit more weapon space.

Another tip: use your zoom for targeting. Normally you can target subsystems only at 5k or less range. The zoom bumps it all the way to 25 or 30k, IIRC. This is handy for checking out the cargo of freighters while still keeping your distance from the L-point or to keep outside of those port speed limiters. Last, it makes it much easier to tag cargo for Jafs to pick up, since you won't have to fly all over the place to get within tagging range.

Great tips! I never knew about the LDSi mega-transport trick.

One note on missiles. For normal (non mission) gameplay they aren't that useful and your turret fighters will blow through them in seconds. But for tough missions, a full compliment of lowly seekers can turn the tides in a hurry. I also play with the REAL mod which makes combat especially unforgiving and gives enemies alot more hull strength. I rarely used them in the vanilla game.

on turret fighters: Use fire at will when you are about to hit multiple escorts from behind. you can initiate the attack and the turrets will light them up when they go hostile. On fire at will mode turrets can switch targets faster than you can and will often kill 2 or 3 in a row (tugs or petrels at least) if you are in a good position. I use Attack target for high speed dogfights as it seems to make them fire more often and in a wider arc. Maybe just my perception though. Having fighter/wingmen commands hotkeyed or at least memorized is very important.