Ok you you just finished up the tutorial area and you have been plunged in to the starting city known as Plymoth.
If you want to be a combat oriented player the first thing I would recommend is to adjust your missions accordingly to your play style. You will find the missions menu under (L) for default, then look for the settings tab on the top of the menu and select (Combat/Military) under the missions pull down and also be sure the "Looking for Work" box is checked.

This is start funneling combat oriented missions to your mailbox (P) by default, you will also notice a message in your chat box along with a flashing mail icon indicating you have new mail.

Along your travels in Plymoth you may also notice there are some NPC's that have mission markers above their head. Some of these are collectables, meaning the NPC is looking for a particular item of interest to them. This could be anything from a rare coin, comic book, military orders or in some cases a special item "to help the cause of the town"

As you hunt in the local area you may find these as drops and you do not have to have the quest in your mission log in order to turn it in.

This section is basically going to cover some ranged weapons, melee is pretty unbalanced right now and needs a lot more polish in order for it to be viable. I am only going to cover Handguns, Automatic, and Rifles as these are the weapons I am using most. If anyone has some feedback for some of the other weapons (shockgun, etc) I will gladly add them in too.

General Weapons
When you learn a new weapon through either the tutorial or in your starting city you are given an "issued" version of that skill type. Sometimes the issued weapon may seem best at first glance however there are several factors to look at besides general DPS.
Raw DPS is calulated by Base damage x Rate of Fire (ROF), it is just a baseline to give you an isea of damage.
In addition to DPS weapons have other values such as:

Physical Penetration you will notice 3 values next to this what you need to keep in mind is that this represents armor types.
Light / Medium / Heavy
A weapon that has a listing of -5/10/20 takes a penalty against targets that have a light armor meanwhile it is most effective against a target with heavy armor, but also has a small bonus towards medium. Not ba bad option however it is always best to choose targets that will be heavy armored (This is something that is not entirely clear to me in game as I am not sure what "animals" are considered, such as Setlags and Vultures, vs visually identifyable mobs like enemy faction NPC's which you can see the type of armor they are wearing)

Range determines how far you can fire a particular weapon. They will typically have 4 ranges listed in differnt colors which will correspond with Ranged Damage Modifiers (RDM) so what you will see is 34m/50m/65m/85m I know that 85m is max range and there are other numbers that correspond with RDM however I need clarification on this as I am colorblind and the colors used to dertmine these mods are unclear to me, however may be obvious to you.

The bottom line for weapons is that these other stats are meanigful and will greatly affect damage aside from just the RAW DPS. Keep in mind that this also works against YOU too, meaning depending upon the type of armor you are wearing you may want to bump up defense skills that counter your armors weaknesses.


Handgun
The tutorial starts you off with a handgun which actually isn't a bad weapon and also unique in that you can also dual weild this or use a protective shield which can also help considering most of what you will be fighting will come into melee range pretty quick.

Handgun has some very decent single target skills and is most effective against medium armor targets.
Hanguns are mid range weapons and as stated pair well with Dual Weild as well as shields which can also help out other skills like melee when it gets fixed.

Assault Weapons
Assault weapons are Short ranges weapons with high ROF that have decent AOE abilities for taking out packs of mobs. Assault is also most effective against light armored targets and takes a pretty hefty penalty against Heavy and even against Medium.
Assault also has some positional abilities that are dependent on you being crouched or prone.

Rifle
Rifle based weapons have the longest range of any weapon especially if you choose a sniper rifle, the drawback is low ROF. Rifles are most effective against Heavy armored targets (weak vs light) and many abilities require you to be crouch or prone which limits your mobility and also makes you suffer penalties vs melee. This doesn't seem to be too bad though as this is my personal weapon of choice.

As an added bonus, if you take Unarmed Combat you will gain the ability "Kick" which can also be thrown in for mobs that close in on melee range, and is not effected by having a weapon in your hand.

As for Fittings, get to know the fitters on your server (Uriel I am looking at you!) and be nice to them, they will often exchange fittings for materials so it helps to hit a few nodes and skin a few mobs in your travels.
Talk to the crafters as they can often recommend what fittings will go well with your particular weapon. For me it seems Armor Penetration seems to be the most effective.

Lastly, don't try to hot swap weapons, If you start combat with a rifle, don't try to switch to a handgun when an enemy closes in. There is a gear swap penalty that will render you useless for a few seconds, this will often end very bad.

After taking on a few missions around the Plymoth start area I would highly suggest going to Ranger Station 56. This is located in Torn Mist Valley (TMV).
One effective way of using your map is to hit SHIFT + M this will bring up your movable and zoomable region map
Once you are in TMV at the ranger station you will get your usual list of region based missions in the mail. However what is most important is this has a very frequent engagement (public quest) which includes helping a patrol back to base or more importantly a base assault.
These engagements basically consist of rival FPR NPC's that will invade and attack the ranger base. They key here is they drop FPR insignias. These insignias can be turned in for various rewards including titles, loot, combat and defensive SI XP. Gaining rank also allows new options from the faction vendors as well.
One important thing to note here:
You at times may have a large stack of FPR insignias, do yourself a favor and turn them in one at a time (there are options to turn in stacks of 1, 5, 25), it may be a bug but a stack of 5 or 25 pretty much offers the same reward as turning in 1. It is a pain but you will thank me later.

This area does have harder mobs like Drakes but they are best avoided as they hit like trucks and the main reason to be here is really for the engagement.
Turning in the FPR Insignias can grant poor quality Skill Imprint (SI) XP, this can be spent at the SI terminal in the Ranger Station which is also conveniently located next to a bank. The only issue is poor quality SI is only evvective to skill level 200, so once you have most of your main skills in combat and defense up to 200, you should probably move on.

After this area I moved onto Leverstow, here you will be looking for Scaed'ecoo mobs, they don't seem to hit very hard and they are relatively easy to kill, they do close in on melee range so be sure you plan accordingly. Elkar are also very good which are in the same region.

This will eventually bolster your skill up higher but unfortunately this is where this start guide leaves off in terms of locations.

Thanks for bearing with me, this is my first guide and wanted to share some knowledge with fellow players to give them a bit of an edge, especially considering there isn't much infor out there just yet.

IMHO, the game is still very rough, and as a combat oriented player combat seems to be more or less the worst of it. Aiming in FPS mode seems very wonky and often times abilities won't trigger or there are weird lag elements that make you unable to engage a mob even though you are well within range.

I created this guide also because some of the frustration I have is the fact that some higher level mobs ^^^ you can kill with little trouble, yet there will be others that are considered trivial VVV that will tear you up (Raxin Pack Leader). I really hope this aspect of the game is addressed very soon as this can really turn a lot of players off and cause them to pass judgement and dismiss the game. Hopefully my findings will help minimize some of the early frustration and point players in a direction where they can at least have an enjoyable experience in the early parts of the game where first impressions matter most.

Some Tips that may help are:
1) Occasionaly you may look what appears to be a book, be sure to read it as it usually will boost a skill.
2) Do a little Dance... You get some great buffs from skill lines like Entertainer and Leadership, don't be afraid to spend a few points in these branches to give yourself some added buffs.
3) As previously mentioned in the guide, get to know a few fitting crafters as fittings will greatly improve your weapons and armor in combat. Remember your gear is just a shell, it is the fittings that contribute the bonuses needed to take out harder targets.
4) Shift + M is your friend... Learn to use it to discover other areas in your region. (some maps are not complete outside start areas though)

More to come!

Rhaythe in game... Feel free to add me as a friend or if you have any questions!