How in the hell.. Are you people targeting specific weapons?

[Fozzie]

I know it works I've had it done to me but I can never figure out how I'm supposed to type rp, fly my ship and somehow target specific weapons to strip the enemy. I've been playing this game for like 9 mo and I worked my way up flying combat missions in a viper so I fly ok. I'm still very lucky if I can even hit anyone during pvp, then it always seems like I pound away at them doing minimal damage untill they just nuke me with a few shots...I don't get it I think I'm missing some major aspect of this game. I'm basically avoiding pvp now because it just sucks to die every damn time I engage no matter who it is or what they're flying.
Even NPCs are a pain, I can attack using a Viper with lvl 8 armor and a 10 shield using 4 Solaris plus missiles and nuke mines(which just piss everyone else off) and a level 5 or 6 NPC takes many many hits to bring down. Engage a few nomads and no matter what I end up with 100+k worth of ship damage. Sometimes I'd swear somebody was playing tricks on me and nerfed my equipment. When I play my fighters and bombers I basically can't rp because I spend all my time dodging npcs or I just die over and over again and rping while docked to avoid dying or docking every 5 mins for bats,bots and missiles just blows.

I could use some advice here.