If you have not yet played the game, and/or taken a look at some of the data that you can collect throughout the system, then you won't know that this gunship, as I refer to it, is little more than a shuttle, repurposed for some basic self defense. Three are lost, and you have the only intact one left. At this time, this is the only ship with a interior, and one you can customise to suit your needs, no less.

Statistics:
Armour: light
Size: medium
Armament: Blaster (high ROF, infinite ammo, low damage, mid spread)
Missiles (homing, all missiles are, kills light fighters with two, maximum)

You can actually aquire the Xeno ammunition, and switch your missiles to one of three Xeno Weapons, which also feature on the Xeno ships, so I will not list them here.

Tactics:
This is your ship, and you are flying it. With no contact from any of the Vanguard battlegroup, you are on your own in this galaxy. Below is a basic rundown of a few combat tactics you may find useful, along with the ship analysis you came for.

1) Run
Now, I know not everyone is going to agree with me here, but sometimes, you just got to get a quick breather, repair your ship, and then charge back in (a tactic incredably useful against larger ships, i.e. the Destroyer). In both atmosphere and orbit, I recomend only using the Cruise speed to gain some distance on your oponent, but still be aware of where they are. This tends to work more often than not against the Xeno ships, which are permanantly stuck in combat speed. Of course, you can always just break orbit, and warp out of a planet/atsteroid's sphere of influence if it seems that the odds are stacked against you.


2) Dogfight
There are no hard and fast rules for dogfighting, but when I refer to dogfighting in this guide, imagine, if you will, the aerial battles of world war One and Two. Ace fighter pilots could easily defeat their similarly matched adversaries. Hell, some of them even scored kills on Battleships, as fighter pilots, in WWII.
In modern times, there have been many that have said that this Honourable form of combat is useless... and guess what? They are wrong. Both in the real world, and in fighter combat games, Dogfighting is an essential component. In the real world, it saves lives, and in many cases, video games follow suit. The way to initiate a "dogfight" in this game is get as close as possible to an enemy, and stay on their tail, pounding them whenever they are in front of you, and turning to catch up with them when they aren't in your sights. The default blaster, or hail fire, will work well here.
Keep in mind, this doesnt work on all enemies. If they are too slow, they are basically naval ships, if they are too fast, then you can't get close enough to get the most out of a dogfight.


3) Hit and Run
This is another tactic which can be applied to this game. Strafe your opponent, activate full cruise speed away, go back in again. Less waiting compared to just straight out running away, but still gives you some time to consider what ships you want to target on your next pass. The important thing about all maneuvers is to keep moving. A stationary target is a dead target, your Gunship doesn't have the armour to cope with the pounding you will recieve when you sit still.


4) Over the Horizion Warfare
Let me just prepare my best anouncer voice... Ahem.
"In the right corner, we have Dogfighting, in the left, we have" this tactic.
Almost polar oposites of each other, OTH warfare involves a heavy use of missiles and the Mega gun, AKA capital ship cannon (CSC). As the name may imply, you want to stay as far away from your opponent, and bombard them with your long range fire-power. This tactic will usually result in a lot of ammunition spent, for very few kills, but is included in this combat guide for completionist's sake. However, agasinst certain enemies, getting in close is suicide. The orb comes to mind, and I mention more about it in its respective section.


5) Raming
Now... there is a fine line between dogfighting, and raming. And not even considering the implications of raming a target IRL with a multi-million dollar fighter jet, but in this game? Raming is completely useless. It does more damage to you, with the sudden decrease in speed, and loss of hull integrity, than it does to your opponent. Avoid any collisions with your opponent. Sure, they may have mercilesly killed a bunch of humans on board the Vanguard, but that does not mean that you lower your standards to compensate. You will fight them with both the moral high ground, and without needles hull damage... unless, of course, you want to end up dead, like the rest.

6) Reverse Thrust Combat
(Thanks to Cutechristy for this section)
One tactic I'd like to suggest for dealing with the fighters and the gun ships. The fighters tend to like to group up behind you and in first person makes it very hard to dog fight with them. You do have one advantage though in that at range you're far more accurate then they are. So I tend to stick just on the edge of the effective range of your blaster and make sure they're comming after you then put the ship in reverse to keep them at range then pick them off as they group up "behind" you.

This tactic works very well against the gunship's missles. As you'll be able to see them getting close to you and quickly switch over to shoot them down. Once the missles are out of the way the gun ship is pretty easy as you can for the most part out maneuver it and just stay behind where it's gun and missles are mostly useless.
(Darkangels thought: I can confirm that this works, I used it in the video to take care of the Destroyer's missiles. I would class this as OTH warefare, since you are staying at maximum range, but this deserves it's own section, thanks to it being thought out)


Now, onto the meat of this guide... the enemies that you are engaging. we have covered a bunch of general combat maneuvers, but there are specific ones for each Xeno ship class, some of which are just more ideal... others are out of nesescity.

So, what is the light figher, exactly? In essence, it is a smaller, more manouverable version of your gunship, without the missiles of course. The other guides have called it a scout, but have failed to provide a size comparison.
It is noticably smaller than your human gunship, and generaly they fly in a formation of 5 or 6 when by themselves.

Unfortunatley, I could only get my information from destroying numerous flights of these ships, in regards to the ideal tactics to use against them.
This is a closer look at the char-grilled wreckage, so you know exactly what you are up against

Stats:
Armour: weak
Size: small
Armament: Blaster cannon (high spread, simmilar to the basline infinite ammuniton weapon on your gunship)


Tactics:
These enemies can quickly rip you to shreads, unless you use your superior speed, and piloting skills (if you dont have the latter, then its not the end of the world) Make full use of your cruise speed to perform strafing runs, or you can dogfight with 6 fighters... see how that goes. If you have them, Missiles are an easy means of confirmed kills, but you would be better off saving your missiles for other oponents. Make full use of your superior manoverability, and you can win in 6:1 odds agaisnt these Xenos...

Of course, if you somehow aquired the Xeno Hail fire, that is the ideal weapon agaisnt these oponents. Lots of targets v.s. a mid range, high spread and high ROF weapon...

Also, make note of the RT combat rules in the combat maneuvers, if you find that dogfighting isn't your specialty

Now, this one is a little tricker... this ship is roughly equal to yours, if not for the slower handling that this ship possesses. Behold the gunship, in all of its chared glory...
I am working on a tight budget here, I can't exactly get a screenshot in the middle of battle.

Stats:
Armour: Standard
Size: Medium
Armament: Circle cannon (energy weapon, highly accurate)
Missiles (slower than yours, 5 damage per hit, but can easily overwhelm)

These ships, when you first encounted them, will likley fly in pairs, and their homing misiles can destroy your armour. But their most dangerous weapon is their circle cannon, which is extremly accurate, and can destroy you faster than their missiles, but not quite as fast as a full complement of Light fighters.
Tactics:
These ships are not particularly good at dogfighting, make use of this weakness, and get in close. And yet again, you can get easy kills with the Missiles, which surprise surprise, isnt ideal. On the other hand, if you fire missiles, then shift up to cruise speed, their missiles dont travel fast enough to catch up with you. Also, sharp turns can shake them off their missiles as well, so you can continue pounding their asses (do the Xenos even have asses? Their ships do, at least) with little resistance. Refer to RTC, if you are not so good at dogfighting...

So, this is the Xeno orb, which I have only found on the icy wasteland of Morena (citation needed)
BEHOLD
This orb is pretty big... how big exactly?
So big that I can stand within its gun. Yeah, this is a mean ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to shoot down, especially considering they operate in pairs, like the Xeno gunship.

Stats:
Armour: strong
Size: large
Armament: Hail fire... (high rate of fire, inaccurate, high spread, 5 damage per hit)

Tactics:
This was actually hell to try and shoot two of these things down, considering the range they engage you at. They surpisingly have decent speed, you cannot catch up to them in combat speed. Dogfighting is out, unless you have a death wish, as they can shoot at you while flying away from you. Missiles are a waste, their insane rate of fire and high spread destroy them before they hit. OTH warfare, although I loathe it, is nesescary to effectivly combat these ships, specifically the capital Ship cannon/Mega blaster. Anything else will not work all that effectively.
More chared orb, because I want my revenge on these damn orbs. I died far too many times to these evil monsters, because I couldn't use OTH. I only had missiles back then.

This masterpiece of alien tech... is pure evil. Just look at my aproximate statistics of it.

Stats:
Armour: Light capital (with only default weapons, this is going to hurt you, a lot more than you can hurt it)
Size: Light capital (you could probably fit two human gunships in there, if it was hollowed out)
Armament: Capital missiles (these will catch up to you in Combat speed)
Capital gun (50% hull damage per hit)

Tactics (revised) Idealy, you want to engage, perform a straffing run, and back off (hit and run). If you have it, the Circle blaster is one of the most ideal weapons to combat this ship, but it can be done with missiles. However, if you have aquired the Mega cannon (capital ship gun) from Veles, then you are set. As of yet untested, it's high damage when used against you, the player, should only be ever brought to bear agaisnt the Destroyer, or the ORB.

Whatever you do, dont ever celebrate your victories early, the Xenos missiles dont blow up unless they hit you, or run out of fuel. The same goes for you though, not that it matters at that point.

Maybe one day, I will be able to analyse the wreckage of one of these ships properly... all I need to do is follow it down after engaging it, for slightly longer than this clip. Note that I have already reduced it to roughly half health, (give or take) and am making full use of the hit and run tactics, as detailed within combat maneuvers. But there is always room to improve, as shown by me getting hit by a few missiles.

SO CLOSE

So, you finnaly got the balls to take on one of the orbital battlegroups? Well, this is what you are in for... at their worst, a battle group can consist of a full complemement of Light fighters, a pair of either the Orbs or Gunships, ussually the latter, and almost always one Destroyer. I touched on it in the Missile Destroyer section, but this is one of the most difficult engagements currently implemented into Rodina.

So, here is a hypothetical situation. You have just finished looting a planet, and are attempting to break through the atmosphere. You do that fine, but are intercepted by a fleet/intentionaly targeted one. They are now firing at you... you have a few options, but first, you need to know exactly what they are packing... oh wait, since you read the rest of this guide, you should know each Xeno Ship's loadout. Prioritise targets. Take out the gunships/orbs first, then deal with the fighters. Once they are all destroyed, then you can attempt to engage the Destroyer... assuming you are still alive, of course. I know, this is the ideal circumstance, what happens if it isn't?
You adapt. That is the true key to survival in Rodina's harsh space combat. You have to remember, speed is your ally, and you can, at any point, run away. I won't tell anyone, I have done it many times. You don't like your situation, then do something about it. Warp out if you can, if you want to re-engage, then refer to Run tactics, in the Combat Maneuvers, or dogfight with enemies if they are spread out enough.

So, what have we learned today? In short, I have given you the basics you need to have some sort of knowlege... now it is up to you to build upon what I have taught you. Remember these four critical things.

ASESS, ENGAGE, ADAPT, and SPEED

These should be at the forefront of your mind before you engage any enemy. If you are expecting Orbs, prepare the CSC. Light fighters, the Hail fire. A battlegroup? Well, just roll everything I have talked about into one. Hit and run, change targets and loadout, re-engage, and repeat. Maybe then this will happen less often to everyone.


DAMN YOU DESTROYER, DAMN YOU.
I will upload a video demonstrating the Xeno battlegroup in action, and link to it here, at some point.