Their defense is of a different kind than your attack, so you could be falling victim to the dreaded off-type defense bug. I've had this happen to me, and it's tremendously frustrating.

Depends on the version of the game you're playing. What is it? The last couple of DA builds have had this problem (maybe more, but that's what I remember at this point).

Yeah, they said the off-type defense bug was fixed in the latest build, but others have said that it's not. I've had bad experiences with it (I think) in the latest build (not beta), but I've also had times when it looked like it was fixed. So I don't know what to tell you except maybe switch defenses so that if he's getting the edge with off-type defense, you can as well. That's much faster to research than to change weapons.

Good luck!

DoJ, like I said, it seems like it's been inconsistant for me. Then again, I haven't done a "scientific" study of it.

I think there's a thread called "off-type defense bug", or at least searching for that kind of thing should work. People have already done some studying of it, so you don't need to repeat it if you don't want to.

I am playing DL and even there i find my ships doing far less damage than i would expect when the AI has a stronger fleet.

One example is where my fleet had an overall attack of 28 and a drengin fleet had an overall attack of 32. We were both using missiles, and one of my ships had +4 missile defence while their fleet had about +4 shield defence. I lost 4 small hulled ships and one medium hulled ship (my whole fleet) while they only lost two small hulled ships and kept 3 small hulled ships. I'm there watching the battle, watching my ships pounding theirs and miraculously not doing any damage while mine dropped like flies, it was pretty freaky.

Let's not forget the effect of luck.
e.g., If a ship has attack strength 100 going up against 0 defense, it will score a hit between 0 and 100. If I spend 1 race point at startup for 25% luck then it scores between 25 and 100!

Don't forget that the Thalans came from an alternative future to stop the humans from destroying the universe. They just forgot to bring all their fleets and techs... Maybe they were just trying to not look suspicious, they even joined the UP and all, hehe.
I'm JOKING!

Anyhow, even though it seems blatantly obvious the Drengin fleets are cheating in my current game, it is most certainly a fun game!

They are only an average strength race using slightly more powerful missiles than me.

All my ships have point defence and theirs have none. I am amazed that my ships which have point defence can inflict only 20 hitpoints while their fleets with no defence (+1 shields) inflict 80 hitpoints (fleet combined).

Other more powerful races such as the Alterians are giving me ships in aid and even their ships with point defences get wiped away even quicker than my ships. How is it that the drengin ships are able to slaughter Alterian ships so easily when the Alterians are more powerful than the Drengin?

My race stats are as follows... Human unaversalists, ability points - maximum level of defence, hitpoints and weapons with creativity and luck.

It seems to be that when the AI has a slightly better fleet, they get allot more bang for their buck than what seems fair. In order to dominate, you really need to have vastly superior ships - in which case the game can become booring so all in all i don't mind if they appear to be cheating, then at least i will enjoy the challenge of building vastly superior ships and crushing the cheating basteds under the weight of my emense superiority.

I will have to look through my saved games and see if i can grab some precise stats.

At the moment my older fleets have been routed severely so i have nothing left to experiment with. I am however about to undergo a session of rush buying a generation of new improved ships so tonight will be fun!

As for cheating, well i get that idea from watching the fleet battles... when i see my missiles pounding away at a ship with no defence and seeing little dammage while my ships with defences disintergate like confeti,,, yea the word cheating does cross my mind.

Ok i got some results... i had 3 medium hulled ships in a fleet. Each ship had +7 missiles and +3 missile defence, i attacked a lone defender which had +24 missiles and +1 shield defence. The result was the defender recieved 13hp damage and was destroyed, but my ship recieved 19 hitpoints of damage. Why are they consistently able to do so much damage to my ships?

Anyway, i played on last night and rushed bought those powerful ships... the Drengin just mowed over the top of them and started taking all my worlds, that was fun hehehe.

So i reloaded from that same point of rush bying and redesigned the ships... amazingly i then slaughtered the drengin fleets which is a startling difference to what happened using the old design.

The old designs i was using was a large hulled ship with 23 missile defence and 20 missile attack. These ships i acompanied with tiny ships using 5 laser attack and 2 missile defence. I was using lasers because i wanted to reduce the firepower of the small ships so they would not be targeted first, also i wanted to discourage the drengin to develop missile defences. This strategy failed miserably and i got wiped out, also the drengin still targeted the tiny ships first!

So i reloaded the game and tried the following strategy... I simply reduced the missile defences on my large ships to 12 and got the missile attach up above 30, then i completely eliminated the missile defence on my tiny ships and got them up to 10 missile atack each. Now these tiny ships still got targeted first but to my suprise, the enemy ships evaporated nice and quick, and i didn't even have to rush buy any ships!! such a big difference just by reducing defences!!!

when you have +4 missile defence against + 10/15 missile attack, it is time to quit and use the space for guns!