What did it for me was basically parking my shit in the middle of the key and just shooting out at them. They seem to struggle to target you when you're right next to the station. Reducing the total number of damage sources in this fight took priority for me over shooting down the high level guys first.

I used turrets on my 3rd weapon slot. Turrets autofire and usually decimate everything coming after me. If you have the high enough perks in starship design, it's pretty simple.

With turrets I could focus on my flying and dodging. Tip for missiles is to boost then stop , then boost if targeted again and stop boosting. Focus on the flying and let the auto turrets shoot for you.

It’s worth pointing out that you don’t need to destroy all of the ships once you’re attacking the key. It’s a little less daunting than it originally appears

I ended up finally beating this damn thing by flying super far out so I wouldn’t get shredded by 8 ships at once.

I’d take out a ship, get to safety, save, blow up several times, repeat.

Upgrade ship weapons to as high a particle beam as you can. Buy and use ship parts. upgrade your shields.

The best ship parts are both perk/talent locked AND level locked. So you need piloting 4 && ship upgrade 4 && level 48 or whatever.

Dumb af.

I didn't even have any starship building skills when I finished that mission and my ship tore through everything like paper. I had the best possible A class (the lowest level stuff without skills) equipment you can buy at New Atlantis, and 4 particle cannons for massive DPS. Barely took damage and was obliterating the ships in 2 or 3 shots and the cannons themselves took just a few more. I'd suggest just going and doing some minimal upgrades.

Or to cheese: make your ship a square frame so the enemies just shoot the middle and never actually hit you cuz there's nothing in the middle.

Borscht is a pretty awesome approach.