
Yesss... the beginning is hard and tricky. I had the same problem when I tried the mod for the 1st couple of times. It depends on your tactic but my idea was to keep mothership as tank so I sold one of my fighters and some other unnecessary stuff, bought cheapest auto-repair system (~160K) for my ms and for the rest of cash (10-15K) best affordable fighter. Even basic turrets for your ms are costly at the beginning and with fresh pilots don't do much damage. To survive your first fights you need to regenerate your ms. IMO fighters are too fragile to serve as a tank.