Combat missions really hard

[Robin_Hood_]

Hi all, just come back to this game after a looooong time. I've tried 3 times to earn a bit of cash buy a nice ship and gear then join a faction and start doing some missions. Each time I was rapidly outgunned in the missions and killed. Is this something I'm doing wrong? Or are these missions designed for multiple people? Also the equipment I'm able to get doesn't seem very good (class 2-3 guns and class 3 shields)

1st time I picked up a civilian very heavy fighter and bought level 3 civilian guns (so power wasn't effected) and kept my freelancer license but couldn't do a 40k mission. Seem to run out of power really quick and then get surrounded and killed.

2nd time I played as gallia - similar set up but went for level 1 guns to keep my power up (also tried a set up with missiles and higher level guns) but still ran out of power. This setup probably only cost 100k so had 250k sitting around with no better gear to buy still struggling to do 40kish missions.

Last time I joined coalition with a similar setup but with no jobs for less than 70k there didn't seem anything I could do.

Any help or suggestion would be greatly appreciated!!