So I've completed the mission Advanced Combat Training I - Enemy Drones, in which you have to hunt down some collector bots in waves of five, ten and then twenty. I was pretty sure that I'd gotten the hang of it - the bots got a few dozen shots off on me, but mostly I cruised through the mission with relative ease.
Completing the mission leads to a second mission, Advanced Combat Training II, in which you jump to a neighboring system to compete with a station guard in taking down Kannik Collectors, which is a huge difficulty spike. I'm not saying that the Kannik Collectors are difficult to take down, it's just that the station guard's Vulture is so incredibly fast and has what I believe is a weapon that is far more powerful than mine. The mission's objective is to land the last hit on 52 different Kannik Collectors within an hour, and within about fifteen minutes of gameplay, my automated station guard competitor was so ridiculously fast that I amassed a grand total of five Kannik Collector kills, which is far off pace for even the one-hour time limit. Can someone make this mission less grueling to complete? Thank you!
If it helps, I'm playing with an Itani character in Itani space, flying a Revenant with a Plasma Cannon HX, an Ion Blaster MkII, and a Stingray Homing Missile Launcher.

Well it is advanced combat training, not beginner.

HX might not be the best for that. If you can get neuts, i'd use those. gauss III's would be even better (you can equip them in any non barracks station) . Find the jump in vector of the bots, and sit on it. kills the bots. eventually the guards will get a kill and will float off while you wait to start again. Then you get another 5-10 kills and the guards get another. Keep doing that until the mission is over.

It makes no sense to decrease the needed skill in those missions. They exist so you learn to control your ship, how to dodge incoming fire and how to aim at the same time. If you dont learn it then, you'll just have the same issue later again over and over.

For what it's worth, a combat-skilled player should be able to complete ACTII in 15 minutes with an HX. I tested this during design (I had been playing for 10 years). It's all about the combos: you kill one, then another, then another, then another, with timing. You may fare better with a phased blaster (if you have access) given its higher velocity.

I realize that ACTII is different 'in kind' to ACTI, and may represent a signficant difficulty jump (can you get through the 20 drones part of ACTI without getting hit?). The purpose is also to become familiarized with the strength of the Station Guards along with combat around a NFZ, which does happen in the course of regular play.

In my defense, VO tends to allow ventures far 'above-curve' early on, rather than keeping things content-gated behind a grind, which I think is great.

Thanks for your feedback, it is incredibly valuable.

Thanks for all of your advice. I retook the mission and got 31 Kannik Collector kills before I drifted into the NFZ by the tiniest of margins and killed my thirty-second. You can imagine what happened after that. I was not pleased.

Situational awareness is part of the training i would say.
Knowledge and skills come at a cost.

Thanks for the slightly inspirational words. Will try again once I use the same method I accidentally tripped to get back to Itan from Sedina V.