Was playing this a bit. Started as assistant engineer/quartermaster and focused on tech skills. It gave me a Wolf to start.
That Wolf frigate is a beast. I've just been slaughtering all the poor pirates with it. Up to 8 mechanical engineering and computer systems, giving me 70 ordnance points with it. Have 5 capacitors, 10 vents, expanded missile racks (started with it), advanced optics (also started with it), advanced turret gyros, and unstable injector. Default weapon loadout.
I've just been setting all the tac lasers and the grav beam on auto and focusing on flying and keeping my nose pointed toward my target (for the grav beam) while manually firing missiles. With the speed boost at 0 flux (I just turn off the auto on my beams if I need to keep flux down for speed) I can outrun the long range missiles, and all the lasers + grav beam can take down shields on all the smaller pirate ships and carriers with ease. Then just peg them with some harpoons and they're toast. The harpoons make good quick killers for broadswords and piranhas when I need to take them out before they can get to the carrier as well.
Being able to take out pirate carrier groups with a very slightly modified starter frigate is kinda silly. Only pirate ship I can't kill is the Venture, and only because it has more flux venting than I can build up with the beam weapons. I still managed to kill a damaged Venture (it was part of a pirate fleet that had fought a hegemony patrol and won) by killing all its remaining escort with just beams and letting it shoot at me until its flux was really high and then rapidly firing off 10 harpoons at it. It overloaded after the first one or two, and the rest destroyed it.