A quick note, interceptors are end-game fights 2nd only to pvp in difficulty, but you can do this with a little strategy and practice.
While engineering is recommended, you don't actually need it, nor do you need FA off skill. HOWEVER, there is one thing that can make a large difference starting out. A Beam laser with thermal vent experimental effect. without it you will need to have enough materials (and skill) to synth heatsinks on the fly.
General points.
-The (cold) orbit.
Beginner strategy: Face the interceptor, keep throttle in the middle of the blue zone (Forward bluezone if outside of 3km, or reverse bluezone if within 1km) while holding up or down thrusters. Hit it with a thermal vent beam (or pop a heatsink) to cool yourself below 20, you will get hit at first but keep at it after a moment your orbit will start to gain enough speed to stop getting hit.
-Swams can only be effectively downed by flak.
Beginner strategy: boost in any direction, FA off, start a "flip", once facing the opposite direction FA on (unless you can manage to stay on target), full reverse throttle, launch flak (hold down the fire button) wait till the reticle fills and turns red, release to detonate. (this is difficult and will take practice and luck)
-Caustic damage is best removed by heat during battle.
Beginner strategy: once hit go into silent running. This affords you the ability to heat up and still be cold on the outside (so you can continue the orbit). Allow your heat to raise to whatever removes the caustic (for scouts/cyclops its about 120, stranger variants need more heat). When caustic is removed use a heatsink to bring heat back down. once below 20 exit silent running.
–Field neutralizer.
Beginner strategy: map it to a button in settings, once you see "energy surge detected" put all pips into sys, then hold that button down. while its held down it will drain your sys capacitor and you will be safe from being shutdown. Release the button after the wave passes you, leave at least one pip in sys to recharge it.
-To actually do meaningful damage to interceptors, and live.
Beginner Strategy: Use fixed hardpoints either 4 AX MC (decent), 4 AX plasma (better), or 4 Guass (best but not as easy for beginners). once you have established a cold orbit and have reached 0 heat, fire a single volley from all 4, this will spike your heat. Use beam (or sinks) to bring it back to 0. repeat. if using AX MC's fire until you reach 20 heat then use beam to cool. When you exert a heart focus your fire on it but keep it one volley at a time, remember that heat and orbit is keeping you alive, firing more gets you hit more.
I want to be clear that this is not the best strategy out there, but it also Doesn't require engineering! (save for beam laser). So while you wont be as effective as a fully engineered ship, you can still help and with practice solo cyclops variants.
Its also true you can build a shield tank and ignore heat but you wont last as long unengineered, and wont likely be soloing anything without some serious skill.
As a last point, Use a medium ship like the Krait mk2, and dont try to mix roles, if you want to fight interceptors you wont have space for flak, thus you must ignore swarms. Wait till you've built some experience or engineer some before trying an "all in one build"
Hope this helps.
