That's because the FdL handles like a bathtub (Gaming)

by ZackDark , Not behind you. NO! Don't look., Tuesday, December 13, 2016, 19:18 (2902 days ago) @ Korny

And Phisto should be ashamed of flying it!

;p

All kidding aside, this game's dogfighting is a bit more like a game of chess than a game of reflexes. Unless you're way overpowered or a LOT faster than the enemy ship, you have to carefully switch power from engines to weapons to shields and back (the three columns on the right of the map) as the fight progresses. Boosting eats a chunk off of the ENG bar, regenerating shields eats SYS and firing weapons consume WEP.

As you can notice, he is constantly boosting to try and outmaneuver the enemy ship (which can be seen in the 3D map as the red triangle). On top of that, his weapon must be one hell of cannon, because it takes over half his WEP reserve per shot.

The map is a mess because it is listing all the asteroids around, but essentially, the disc is the plane of the ship and a bar rising above and dipping below it represent how far from the plane any given object is, as well as the origin of the bars represent how far within the plane they are from you.

Now, it looks kind of slow and potshot-y because his ship, while very maneuverable for its class, is still quite big, so the enemy has a slight advantage on speed. I, for one, favor the Vulture, which is a tiny fighter that allows for big guns, so I just zip around big enemies flying ships like Phisto's and busting their subsystems, like shield generator and engines until they're sitting ducks. On the downside, if Phisto's gun even grazes my ship, I'll at the very least lose all my shield and a bit of my hull, possibly damaging some subsystem.