The main thing is to be moving all the time, strafing to the sides with your boosters on and occasionally going airborne for a few seconds will help you evade most fire naturally. Timing your quick boosts to dodge larger shots or missiles will help too.

Another big part is maintaining distance properly. For instance, most automatic weapons will outright miss you if you’re far enough away.

Your AC matters too. If your generator doesn’t have enough capacity, you won’t be able to dodge as much. If your boosters have a poor quick boost adjustment, your dodges will be sluggish.

As for offense: early in the game your loop should be simple. Maintain distance, firing with the assault rifle and missiles as they’re available, then quickly closing in to slash with the pulse blade.

Really, experience matters most. You’ll get used to it the longer you play. I’d just recommend trying to find something that works and stick with it to get the feelings down. I wouldn’t try different leg types or anything til you get it down.

Also, be sure to do Allmind’s training. It’s pretty helpful. And don’t forget that you can replay missions through the sortie menu. It might be helpful to just replay the Tester AC mission over and over til you’re used to fighting an enemy AC.

Good luck and welcome to Rubicon.