I have just gotten my full ship and weapons. I am at the tutorial mission where I go to Touchdown and eventually pirates arrive. They kill me before I can even face them. It takes more than a few minutes for them to spawn so this is extra frustrating. And when they do spawn they are right behind me and kill me before I can even turn around. I do okay when doing the combat simulations out of the main game. Is there something that I am missing?

Use the thrust overrides and you should generally be okay.

Also limit your framerate to 60 fps to be safe.

This is shameful. I had downloaded a 360 controller config, but was not setting it as the control config in the options menu of the game. So it was defaulting to well the default. The 360 controller worked, but the right stick was completely inactive, and the left stick would help with positioning. I could only use throttle. I remembered the importance of straffing and sliding, but this time I thought that I was just supposed to do so while flighting against the throttle. This control scheme would have been great for something like Freespace, X-Wing, or Wing Commander. In Independence War 1 and 2 this left me a sitting duck. Once I actually selected the proper control config in the options menu the right analog stick became used for thruster override. Combat suddenly started to make a lot more sense and became a llot more like I remembered it.