Combat, what's the deal?

[flyinj]

So, I put a few more hours into this Last night... I'm coming away a little leery. The scope of the game is there, and the customization is really nice... it's just that I'm not really getting the combat. I think I may be not understanding exactly how you're supposed to go about things. I have two good beam weapons on the front of my ship, but they seem totally random as to how long they fire and when they fire. I know the enemy ship is in my forward arc, and I have the enemy ship at about 50 range. Sometimes I get a nice long sustained beam on the target, and sometimes it Lasts for about half a second. Sometimes both weapons fire, sometimes only one does. This is all keeping the ship within 50 km(?) range, which is an optimal range for the stats of my beam weapons.

Anyone have any advice?