Also, retreat and fire isn't a noob tactic. It's a commonly used tactic. Thow down a couple normals at the start of the fight, fall back and let cmd gauge fill back up, rush foward and throw down a couple more normals.
Your going to be facing military grade ships with a ex cargo ship. Until you get better ships, fire, retreat, foward, fire & repeat is going to be used a lot.
Also, unless your using a SLR cannon (Its the Pallas Battleships special attack. Its a stronger version of the Panfilov Cannon.) you'll want to focus on the front positioned ships. Or weapons that hit all enemies, but you don't need to worry about those until the 2nd part of the game.