I got an even longer session in last night and, well... look, here's the footage from it:
It culminates in a seven-minute fight against a light fighter that I had to break off because neither of us could do any damage through shields, followed by the same thing against another ship for another 20 minutes. The dogfighting is just dire, it's gruelling and takes forever and you never feel like you're making any progress until one of you abruptly explodes. They've had more than two years to fix their core gameplay and they've only moved it through different permutations of **** while they work on the really important stuff: simulating headbob and headbob reduction, and making concept art they can sell for $750.
There is no ****ing way they have made any progress on Squadron 42 if this is the palette the designers have to work with.
