intrinsic_parity
Well, I figured that out when I read somewhere that pirate ships are a bit weaker than their different equivalents. And most of my ships are pirate since they come from salvage; and I wanted for my first ride at the game to never buy any ship. I like making my life harder like that. but this endorses my point: A player should have possibilities to beat greater raw power with better strategies, and... well I found mine:
the only strategy that worked so far is to only fight with your bigger ships and order them all to
defend the same point. that is the only way I found to make them not dive into the enemy forces and get killed, and to get them to stay somewhat together so that they can support each other. then you wait for them to destroy all the enemy small ships, then wait for the remaining big ships to imitate their fallen companions of the same size which tried to dive into my forces and stupidly died early. I didn't loose any ship since I do that; but on the other hand, I didn't try this with medium-sized ships, so I don't know if it works.
Also, each time I tried to pilot a ship I died because there is just too much to take in count when piloting a ship: targetS, different types of damage to deal, soft flux, sheilds orientation, sheild removal with different incoming types of damage, acceleration, manoeuvrability, ship orientation, momentum, ally positions, enemy positions, ally management while I am distracted, and I probably am forgeting things. I understand why some people don't want boarding.
But I thought: I have these two shade class phase frigates and this hyperion class frigate, the squad I affectionately call my "task force". They were supposed to, In my greatest fantasies, dive into battle at the best moment using their phase cloak and teleport abilities, use their high EMP damage bursts to disable a little too close and dangerous big enemy ship's weapons and engines and retreat right after so they would never be too much in danger; then my big ships would notice the enemy ship's troubles and rush closer to deal it as much damage as possible (or I would order them to using the
eliminate command), but they would not be too much in danger because they would attack together because I ordered one of them to escort the other! then one of my phase frigates un-phased on my capital ship. immediate destruction.
But I figured: no sheild to manage, great manoeuvrability, and requires a brain to manage: those shade class are perfect for me to control them myself! plus, the numerous reatreats give me many occasions to check on my other ships!
now it is like two legion class, two onslaught, two dominator and their many smaller ships against only my conquest-class standard, my dominator, my three atlass mkII class modified superfreighters and my shade, and I rarely get any of my ships disabled.
So to summarize: I know I played this game the wrong way: I didn't want to repair or replace lost ships because I didn't want to dumbly loose any money, and I wanted everything to be over-obtimized. Still, the only strategies being the equipment of your ships and "defend this position" is, I feel, not enough. the preparing of a ships is good, but I would like to make battle strategies. more and better group behaviors would greatly improve this.
Edit:
actually, my strategy shows something important: in a battle, or you dumbly loose because your ships are not where they are supposed to, or you win because all the enemy ships make the same mistake at some point. my strategy is just to wait for the enemy ships to be where they are not supposed to. I really saw it during recent battles: I don't need the shade and EMP strategy, the "defend" strategy is enough.