@Annex: I keep putting making the Faction distribution a bit more "fair" on my list, but I haven't got it done yet. I'll look at that for the next build, shouldn't be too hard.
Other than System AI (which, with the exception of Fortress Shield, doesn't effect shield use)... IDK about all that, sounds like you've exposed a bug in Vanilla's AI.
I've actually seen that behavior several times, but I can't quite pin down why the AI does that, when it's perfectly obvious that they should be dropping their shields or Vent or both. It's probably about time to write new AIs for things, but that's a very complicated chore.
@Debido: Fleet vs. Fleet is using a very simple weighted dice-throw system. I set it up this way because I don't like how Vanilla's system works; it hugely over-complicated and yet it produces really boring results, because it doesn't have any real chance for "magic bullet" victories of small fleets over larger ones. The system's heavily-weighted in favor of larger fleets; victor wins and totally defeats the smaller fleet, for now. In the future, I want to add a feature where defeated fleets get a chance to have a few members left, so that players can "vulture" them, but that's been left out for now and it's really not that hard for players to find fleets they can defeat atm, once they're past the "grinding asteroid encounters" stage.
Anyhow, the end-game "You Win" thing works now. I just need to write up the text for it, so I'll do that and push out Build 8.