I think that the player in .91a can concentrate on their "big seven" ship composition, and win against formidable odds. Those seven should be really well founded ship loadouts.
I'm finding that in my heavily modded Nexerelin game (including Starship Legends mod that's still in development), that my legendary officers, on their legendary ships, are quite capable when I go for a 300K+ bounty. My fleet is led by me in a Victory battleship, and my "big seven" are:
1 BB, 3 CA, 3 CV // I don't imply that the battleship is required...but does improve safety over riding in a tough cruiser.
...and the rest are assorted CA/CV/DD.
One flaw in your argument - you basically have a high-end fleet.
In my playtrough I don't have a battleship yet and got 2 cruisers just now, and those super-bounties started popping up very early and now make 99% of all generated bounties (I increased the number of bounties, to no avail)
a) in my initial deployment of those seven ships, we rarely face daunting odds in the initial phase of the battle
b) my .91a AI do a great job of staying alive and especially, not overloading. I get a lot of time to kill things
c) the enemy fleets insist on a high number of smaller ships...which as i kill...allows me to bring in the rest of my top ships. A Drover has no business loitering on the flank of a Victory with enhanced thrusters.
d) So the enemy reinforcements are facing the reverse snowball...I'm getting stronger and they are not
The vulnerability for me continues to be massed enemy heavy carriers...a force led by 10 heavy carriers downed several of my ships and represents the only mixed result I've had against these big huge bounties.
My "big seven" really depend on the trickle-in of AI ships to survive in these odds.
No, there are some bounty configs that I won't go up against yet...I'm just now getting enough big fleet flag-deck experience to face the "lots of Conquests" configs. Oh that multi-Paragon/Astral bounty config?...let's await perhaps our own single Paragon erm?
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The magic resolution to frustration is: ensure that AI ships have best tactical speed, and really high flux dissipation. Don't let them get trapped and overloaded...that is the default death sentence. Bring blue-class (advanced) fighters seeded with several that have Ion weapons. Your AI pilots live and help, while you and your fighter squadrons get in the key kills. Perhaps assign a smaller ship to escort you to help with anti-flanking or with flak support.
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