I've had some very screwy situations...there was a particular game with my friend where I had a Titan and 3 caps "hold off" an enemy invasion of 3 caps....their caps were like 1 or 2 levels higher than mine, but that's it....

Anyway, this AI's 3 caps shredded mine and nearly killed my Titan...literally, I ordered my first cap to retreat as soon as it started taking damage because it's shields dropped so fast, and they killed it before it could even leave the gravity (no ion bolt BS either)...at that point, I just left my fleet there out of shear curiousity...my other two caps were killed fairly quickly while I never even broke shields on one of theirs...eventually they did add an HC or 2 (I think the most frigates they ever had there was 2 or 3) but still, there is no way they should have had that much firepower over me...

Titan + 3 caps vs. 3 caps and 2-3 frigates...you'd think that would favor me, or at least be close, but no...I also remember that each individual weapon on their caps was doing well over 100 DPS despite most caps having a base total DPS of around 50...my friend however was having no problem despite being outnumbered...his titan and caps, while they weren't really killing much, also weren't dropping like flies...

At the time, I was Advent Loyalist fighting TEC Rebels...their caps were level 7 (damn vicious AI) while mine were lvl 5 or so...my Titan was fairly low level...I also had culture bonuses...