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[Thaago]

For boosting combat effectiveness, I'd recommend (in no particular order and probably forgetting a bunch of stuff):

Use good loadouts. There are some threads with guides on how to build a ship well as its a pretty involved topic.

Pilot aggressively and give orders. Hard to give concrete advise because it depends on situation, but try and identify lone or vulnerable enemy ships/clusters of ships and concentrate on them. Try not to trickle your fleet into the enemy if at all possible. If you see one of your ships winning a duel (usually a frigate/destroyer on the side of the map) give it an eliminate order to speed it up. For a combat specced character: maintain local superiority. Your flagship generally wants to be going after the most powerful thing it can kill comfortably - leave tougher targets until you have support.

Have a plan on how you're going to secure kills. This is again going to get better next version because the 'speed boost on overload' skill is changing, but currently it can be pretty challenging to actually kill an officered ship and not just chase it away for it to regenerate its HP (vent). This could either be being in a fast striker with high DPS they can't get away from, or disabling their engines with EMP so they can't run, or surrounding the enemy cluster with a group, or using ECCM'd missiles to pop them, or a sudden bomber strike... you get the idea. But enemies getting away to vent is rough.

Stack bonuses: every endgame fleet should have 20 nav rating in its usual deploy, even if its not using coordinated maneuvers. The damage boost from L1L, CR boost from L3L, and flux boost from T4L stack and are significant. Either mitigate the ECM loss (use short ranged fast strikers, use ECCM + missiles) or really commit to ECM (will be better next version).

Make sure your ships work together and keep an eye on their deployment. Eg: If a heayy ship is built to kill capitals and cruisers its probably going to struggle to kill frigates effectively: support it with other ships that are specialized for that role, possibly with temporary escort orders or just making sure those ships are in the same area. If a ship is meant to be a mobile striker that finishes targets off, have other ships that give pressure and drive flux up. If you have a lot of gunships that get in each other's way, consider getting some carriers or missile ships or increasing your ship's ranges so they don't crowd as much.

[TaLaR]

@Thaago
All that is good advice, but not quite enough to turn the tables on current endgame.

[Rauschkind]

For boosting combat effectiveness, I'd recommend (in no particular order and probably forgetting a bunch of stuff):

Use good loadouts. There are some threads with guides on how to build a ship well as its a pretty involved topic.

Pilot aggressively and give orders.

the thing is: i did this...
some battles - not all of them but some for whatever reason - my ships just wont do squat. i think its when the ai tinks im to outnumberd in these battles i pretty much have to kill everything myself.

i tried various things, attack and elimitation orders combined with move or guard orders and i have seen them all getting ignored.
usually at this point i get the reply that i cant order suicide. but well then. have my ships flee. because just  standing by in a battle IS suicide.

[Maethendias]

I'm 100% serious by the way. I'd be curious to know what kind of late-game fleet comps people run.

Player-piloted phase ships or unkillable Derelict Contingent fleet can break the game in your favor, but otherwise I don't see a stable solution.
Playing field is too stacked vs player. You can kinda level it by using multiple mercs, but doing this just feels bad, because you waste so many SP on mere maintenance.

so basically you are screwed if you dont play phase and or derelicts

[Maethendias]

For boosting combat effectiveness, I'd recommend (in no particular order and probably forgetting a bunch of stuff):

Use good loadouts. There are some threads with guides on how to build a ship well as its a pretty involved topic.

Pilot aggressively and give orders.

the thing is: i did this...
some battles - not all of them but some for whatever reason - my ships just wont do squat. i think its when the ai tinks im to outnumberd in these battles i pretty much have to kill everything myself.

i tried various things, attack and elimitation orders combined with move or guard orders and i have seen them all getting ignored.
usually at this point i get the reply that i cant order suicide. but well then. have my ships flee. because just  standing by in a battle IS suicide.

thats because range is king for ai behaviour

being bullied into -20% range permanently all the time means your fleets will always be timid, instead of steady (for example)

[Rauschkind]

i dont really think this is a range thing. i see long range ships staying just outside their range as well as short ranged ships staying out of their range (But being much closer then the long ranged ships), i see my ships not engaging at all and also, i usually have pretty high ecm ratings myself.

[Demetrious]

@Thaago
All that is good advice, but not quite enough to turn the tables on current endgame.

This. I know it's good advice because it's all things I've learned myself playing Starsector for a few years now.

Stack bonuses: every endgame fleet should have 20 nav rating in its usual deploy, even if its not using coordinated maneuvers. The damage boost from L1L, CR boost from L3L, and flux boost from T4L stack and are significant. Either mitigate the ECM loss (use short ranged fast strikers, use ECCM + missiles) or really commit to ECM (will be better next version).

This, however, is a great idea and something I didn't consider. I've also heard that people who commit to frigates and Wolfpack tactics come out okay since you want Gunnery Implants on every officer anyway and it gives a +6%/+3% ECM rating for frigate/destroyer piloting respectively. A matter of working with the system as-is, I suppose.

I've turned the AI officer multiplier down to 1. If that makes things too easy, I'll try 1.2 or something.

It'd be neat if Alex dropped the officers to maybe 10% more than the player and instead introduced S-mods to AI fleets of lower difficulties. The randomization would be interesting. Sure, sure, just going with obvious safe options (bulkheads etc) would be boring and make the game grindy just like officers can but imagine the... interesting enemies you might bump into with randomized S-mods. SO capitals etc.