Check this out:
I have screen shots of this, but I am not sure how to post them here. If somebody would not mind informing me how to insert a few screenshots, I would be glad to give them.
I had a fleet that had: mass driver: 1164 and beam: 12, and a beam defense of 366, total hits were 601
An enemy fleet had: beam: 1076, NO mass driver defense (but missle defense of 639), and total hits of 290
So, I had 1164 attack vs his ZERO defense against it.
He had 1076 against my 366 defense.
I had TWICE the hit points.
I had 6 huge ships, and he had 10 ships of varying size.
What would you expect as an outcome??? Based on hits alone (more than twice), I would expect to loose half my force (maybe 3 of the 6 ships) tops. Given that I had a defense against his offensive type, I would expect to loose less, maybe 1 or 2 of my ships lost, worst case 3 (given random), but never more.
NO, I reloaded 3 times just to see what else it did. The first time, the AI had 1 ship left!!! What the FRICK??? The second time, I had 1 ship left, and the next two times, I had 2 ships left. What does this mean??? It means something is not quite right in the combat calculations.