Hello, feedback here.
I am playing a Nex rando generated sector.
I am not sure if it is just my save or not, but in less than 4 years Diable Avionics had squished TT out of existence, and has reduced Hegemony / Persean to one system. They seem absurdly strong on the campaign map, able to win basically every single invasion I see come up on the intel screen. I didn't count how many starting colonies they had, and didn't notice until about a year in that half the map was brick red when my favorite TT trading colony wasn't blue anymore.
As far as the ships go, I think they are exceptionally weak. I'm able to solo the battlecruisers in a tempest, and anything less than the battlecruiser gets deleted by any assortment of high tech / midline laser boats. I think they look really cool, but the extremely small shield arcs, combined with weapons that trade range for other benefits, combined with the phase ability that lowers their shields momentarily just makes them unusable in the AI's hands. If a paragon is concentrating 4 high, 4 grav, and 6 tac lasers on the battlecruiser, and it jumps and lowers its shields for that split second, it is going to lose half its hull instantly. I don't know what needs to be buffed to make these ships less of a pushover, but two paragons can easily beat a fleet of 30 of these battlecruisers and not take a single point of hull damage. I'd start with the shield lowering jump ability - the ai just suicides with it. After that, maybe buff the shield arc slightly so I am not able to solo the BCs in a frigate. The weapons also all seem underwhelming in a world where range is king.