It's the 3rd mission. I got insta-gib'd as soon as the thug show up.

I tried to switch repair to max, or max engine, or max weapon, still can not kill them (my record is look at them for 2s... then got exploded). I timed, the maximum time I can stay alive is 6s.

Is this mission supposed to be this tricky?

The mission isn't hard it just needs some practice to learn how to fly and fight. Your initial ship is very maneuverable but can survive only a few hits. For me the game got easier after trading the Storm Petrel for the less fragile tug in Act 1. Generally try make yourself a harder target. Use the manual thruster override (w,a,s,d keys) to evade the tug and circumvent the port speed limit. Avoid head on attacks and pointing the unprotected stern of your ship towards the enemy. If you are damaged use free flight mode (N) or keep w pressed to circumvent the top speed limit in assisted flight mode to quickly get some distance between your ship and the enemy. You can also outrun missile if your fast enough, I think their top speed is something around 2800 m/s.

The problem is that the combat takes place in a station's port speed control zone, which artificially limits your throttle, plus the game never gives a tutorial about the importance of lateral thrusters, which are the most important combat feature in the game.

So as Cunctator says, use the WASD keys instead of the throttle. Dodge sideways to avoid missiles and PBC fire. Go faster than the port speed by using the A and S thruster overrides.

So, in case of missiles incoming, what is the best course of action?

1. Make sure you have counter-measures installed before starting the mission.
2. Lateral thrust. (A & D keys)
3. Point your nose at the missiles (you can spot the trails) and open fire with a Quad Light PBC. I take out a fair number of missiles with this handy little pea shooter.

Failing that, simply use W to thrust away for a good long time. Missiles seem to have about a 25,000 meter range so it may take you a while. Not advised if your mission has you protecting another ship, since you'll be too far away to do any good.

Later in the game LDSI missiles are useful for an unintended side effect - they also explode any missiles caught in the blast wave.

It's automatic or what? Because in Freespace, I have to manually launch counter measurement, and IWar doesn't have key binding option so I don't know what key to launch counter measurement.

Countermeasures are launched automatically, though there's a mod I wrote which allows you to launch them manually if you wish.

Holy crap, thanks for the topic. Using lateral thrusters turned a six-second countdown to gameover (bang-bang-bang-bang-boom every time) into a ridiculously easy strafe run.

wait until later part... ;-)

I have this same issue, but I tried strafe on occasion as well. I did finally get past it but what I was thinking that this battle starts right after a cut scene. Everytime I tried to skip the cutscene to try again I was pounded within 3 seconds. The last time I let cut scene end, I was able to get manuevering room and survive the initial onslaught.

My other observation is my shields never go down and the message on HUD is hull damage. I am wondering if I am running too fast of a machine thats causing some of this misrepresentation of the HUD and how some of these missions react. Random encounters I survive quite fine but these story ones seem to start off with major onslaught out the door.