There is a fairly safe way to become (more) proficient in combat, which is by doing bounty hunting in resource extraction sites (RES).

What it comes down to:

• Drop into a resource extraction site
• Target any ship and wait for the default scan to finish
• Check the wanted level of the NPC is
• If anything else but clean, keep it targeted and follow it around but do NOT fire at it yet
• The NPC security forces will at some point start shooting at it
• The target’s shields will drop first, after which you’ll see its hull go down
• Once hull gets below 10-15%, you open fire too, until the target is destroyed
• Rinse repeat until you get tired, then head back to the station to collect your bounties

Since you “helped” the local police taking down these criminals, you get your share of the bounty and your combat rank will go up, basically without running any risk.

If at some point you feel you are getting better at it (for example, when you find yourself constantly screaming at the screen “Oh, come on, is that all you’ve got!?”), you can simply start shooting at the NPC’s at an earlier stage, like for example at 25-30% hull, and so on.

The final thing to keep in mind is the type of RES you dive into, as that directly determines the amount of NPC’s and their combat level:

Resource Extraction Site [Low] – few NPC’s, combat levels are low
Resource Extraction Site – more NPC’s, medium combat levels
Resource Extraction Site [High] – even more NPC’s, combat levels are high
Resource Extraction Site [Hazardous] – lots of NPC’s, combat levels are very high

The low and medium sites are excellent for working your way up to the bigger fish.