Hi!
when i have nice hull and 4 guns, i go to any of the systems where they are, and 7 ships come at me, i kill one, and die before i can escape with the protoplasm
I can't tell you what to do in SR-1, but in SR-2 I couldn't alone attack a system with robots for a _VERY_ long time. The only one variant I've had some small success was retreat-fire with 3 missile launchers. With a very fast ship I ran large circles around the sun and fired missiles at chasing robots. But usually I ran out of missiles before I ran out of hostile robots.
IMO your best bet would be to mix-in in an already ongoing battle for star system.
BR, Iztok