Welcome to combat analysis
v1.1 ??? in general
Gimballed or turret weapons cannot hit shit, useless.
v1.3.08
ASP with gimballed pulse lasers, hit rate is very nice. No problem against interdicting smaller AI ships (eagle, sidewinder and one vulture too).
v1.4 beta 3
Eagle has hardpoints below and above cockpit which looks odd. pulse lasers are pulse lasers, what can you say. turn rate is decent I think, still had lot of endless turn fights.
Python turn rate is horribly slow even with best thrusters. Constant of endless turn fights. Beam lasers are drained quite fast.
v1.4 stress test 3
Cobra with turreted beam lasers and multi cannons is pretty nice, can hit targets quite easily and kill them too.
v1.4
Python with A rated stuff, 3 beam lasers (3A) and 2 multi cannons (1G) is very cool ship. Shields (6A) are incredibly strong and shield shell banks do the rest, I rarely get my shields taken down.
v1.4.01
ASP A5 thrusters, A6 shields, A4 power distributor, with 6x gimballed pulse lasers cannot do enough damage to target ships. Shields No match against anaconda/imperial clipper. Thrusters not capable of keeping ASP behind even heavier target ship even though it moves very nimble on normal docking operations/exploration. Same with 2F gimballed multi cannons + 1G pulse lasers. Unfortunately ASP is no combat ship (against heavies).
Vulture, very nice maneuverable ship, can keep mostly on tail of clipper, python and anaconda just fine... the problem is if these guys have turrets, then they still can shoot you and vultures puny shields are done in no time.
A rated Anaconda is like a fortress but not really in the good way, its incredibly strong with shields but its firepower lack of what A rated python has for example.
Anaconda with 4 x 3D turreted beam lasers, full pips to weapons and heating stays at 91% level. Kills eagles and diamondbacks with one buzz. Would have plenty of room for cannons etc.
When you have wing of wanted ships, two, three or even five, attack the weakest ship first and move up the ranks (not literally combat ranks but ship capabilities) towards the largest ship. This way you eliminate many weapons firing at you while you battle the largest most powerful ship.
Left hand side panel Contacts tab lists all the contacts in your scanner, this is sorted that largest contact (ship) is top of the list. This usually (usually!) is your most dangerous enemy/target/contact.
If you have friend to join you in wing, then its great fun... however you should note that the bounties you get from destroying wanted ships are divided between the wing. So lets say you destroy ship of 100,000cr bounty, then you and your friend in wing only get 50,000cr.
Destroy wanted ships with equal or higher rank than you to make progress. Unconfirmed and possibly only server lag: You get progress points by destroying wanted ships and when you claim the bounty vouchers from these kills.
asp, pulse lasers, A rated everything else
asp, populated space explorer with minimum shields + weapons
vulture, combat set 1
Shieldless combat is a bad idea, you will get killed. Period. Being it on exploration ASP or trading Type-9, there is just no chance of survival on v2.2 when someone attacks you, especially if they are CMDR (a human player).
How to avoid that, well play private group or solo to avoid CMDR's, then is the AI interdictions... which you can try to high wake jump out before the combat even starts, but it is risky, very very risky.
Elite is turning into a very difficult in v2.2 that's for sure. I wonder if this is temporary balancing issue or really something that David Braben wanted to create.