Ty is correct in part.  We implimented a huge swathe of different tweaks to help mask this problem.  First, as he mentioned, we made it so all shots are actually coming straight out the nose of your ship (meaning they fly straight from your crosshairs).  However to make them look right fake tracer rounds still come out of the barrels and converge about 1000 metres away.

Next we actually did increase the hit boxes on the TIE fighter and made em a little bigger on a few other craft so they are easier to strike with.

The shots for spacecraft are also extremely fast compared to anything else in the game.  5Km/s rather than 500m/s.  This gives a lot better chance to hit at the ranges we're dealing with.

And finally, for every shot you "see" and "hear" being fired there are 2-3 more invisible shots that are going into your firing stream as well.  Quite literally your weapons are acting like very rapid firing machine guns.  What this does is drastically increases your chance for hitting with one of those shots in much the same way a shotgun's chances are increased by firing multiple pellets at a target.  Since you don't see, and more importantly, don't hear the actual shots though, it's almost completely unnoticeable.  This, more than anything, was what made it possible to actually dogfight in this engine.  Unfortunately we also think it may be what causes the server lag in 64p games.  But such is life....