No way out?

[Poobah Gorg]

I went to the station where you get the stealth thing. I have auto-target turned on.

Red ships immediately started mass-attacking me. I had leveled myself up to level 4 and had about as good of weapons as a level 4 player could get (off the loads of free stuff you find aorund Persistance). Problem was, auto-target went right to the station, not the half-dozen or more enemies that were swarming, disabling and destroying my ship. I hit both Tab and T a few times, but it wouldn't target the baddies. They killed me three or four times, and from past experience once that's happening your gear starts breaking down. Eventually your gear gets worse and worse and there's no hope of killing any of them.

I'd spent HOURS gathering stuff at Persistance, and had traded dark matter for almost every blueprint I could buy at the first station. I'd invested a fair bit of time trying to build up a crafter-type that also kills things as needed. Kind of disappointed that I can't even get past the introductory section of this particular (newbie) quest.

Here's the thing, it won't let me jump out of the system (blocked by the quest). So I've just got to die over and over and over again until I want to delete and restart my game? Seems like there needs to be a way to retreat and rebuild somehow. Particularly in a quest that's supposed to be easy (and was way easier the last time I did it).

I'm getting to the point where I want to set the game's difficulty to "drooling idiot" level. I enjoy challenging games, but I half-think the game has accidentally scaled up the enemies on this quest a bit overmuch.

In my last game I got similarly stuck on the viral one. Once I had them disabled and boarded one, every other ship in the area would lay into me and I'd die. If I was even fortunate enough to get them disabled.

I my tendency to to spend hours on end in Persistance gathering loot and leveling up screwing up my game? If these are the easier beginning quests, I'd hate see the tougher ones.

I like this game a lot, I just wish it didn't go right from "pick up mountains of free gear" to "get your ass torn off with scant hope of prevailing, dead end, die over and over and you can't escape to rebuild at all."

[sɹɐʎA xɘlA]

I'm not quite sure which mission you may be on there, do you recall the name?

One thing worth pointing out is that tab-targeting limits target selection to whatever is in/near your crosshairs. If you find that it's only selecting the station, looking away from the station might help you select the bad guys.

[Poobah Gorg]

It was the first mission in the "Under the Cloak of Amnesty" chain.

[sɹɐʎA xɘlA]

So, I'm not really sure what guidance I can provide here.

The first mission after "Under a Cloak of Amnesty" (after the initial "kill N baddies" welcome mission) is "How to Avoid Being Seen" (props to Monty Python), in which the goal needs to be accomplished while cloaked. If you happen to drop cloak during that time, the enemies are engineered to be pretty much unkillable and merciless. You really need to stay cloaked during that time. Is that where you're stuck?

[Poobah Gorg]

I'd gotten myself stuck on the introductory encounter. The one where you're attacked upon first entering the system. I'd gotten through that one with great ease in an earlier play-through. Might be I didn't have a shield enabled this time or something, I have no idea. When I shut the game down and loaded a save game, this time the Rebellion/FreeRider/whoever good guys actually helped me. Seemed like that never happened at all the time that I got stuck on it.

I'm normally not a "quit and complain" type gamer, it's just that I'd already restarted the game twice and invested a fair bit of time each time doing lots of treadmillish busywork to level my character the easy (and tedious) way. So I was hoping to figure out a way to recover from situations like I'd described.

It would appear that giving the three-fingered salute to Windows and restarting from the last save is the answer. I wish there was a way to quit the game without saving, to be honest.