Help!!!

[Skyeraven]

the difficulty in the first 2 star wolves are insane especially when dealing with aliens i finally beat SW 1 so i start playing SW 2. off the bat i got to deal with aliens with crappy or no decent equipment or ships. now I'm stuck in the pirate path where i have to investigate storage of alien ships after rescuing the mute guy. those ship tear through both my fighter and mother ship and none of the trade stations offer any decent upgrade help. I tried the god mode cheat it works in SW1 but for some reason Shift + ~ doesn't work in SW 2 and i can't bring up the console what am i doing wrong?