Why does this happen? Little help please

[Maykievic]

this is my situation , they practically have no other resources or planets but still can field a 800+ fleet.
i have better technology missiles 2 vs missiles 1 and i have deflectors while they don't.
They outproduce me like crazy, after a 850 vs 750 battle they won , i thought i could rebuild faster than him due to my resources . we both were 100ish remaining , but by the time I got a 400 fleet he just had another 800 one.

Is this an advanced start empire? how can he have so many resources and produce so many ships this fast?

 

[Guilliman88]

What difficulty? Harder difficulties = AI gets bonuses to resource generation and fleet supply

 

[Adamsrealm]

Firstly what difficulty are you playing on?

Second the ai cheats, it's the only way they can stand up to players, they get ship production speed bonuses and depending of the difficulty recourse bonuses as well.

Additionally you probably lost because they had some point defence, even stage 1 pd makes a huge difference.

 

[Alblaka]

Advanced Start empires start with 4 planets.
As well, regardless of whether you win or lose the battle, you cannot win the war, because the spaceport has 1.5k+strength and will wreck fleets consisting of corvettes only.
Basically, at this phase you should never start a war except to snipe a colony ship or frontier outpost.

Additionally, missiles are the worst of the three weapon types (by far so), albeit in this case it likely doesn't matter, since you're both using them (just be warned that you can outnumber a fleet 2:1 early on and still lose solely due to using missiles).

I would suppose the AI recovered faster, because AI sucks at investing ressources and usually has stockpiles of them. As in, they likely produce only 20-30ish, but have several hundreds of minerals sitting around, which it will not use 'effectively', except for ships (since we know AI really loves to priorize building ships and stations).

Additionally you probably lost because they had some point defence, even stage 1 pd makes a huge difference.

Corvettes can't mount PD.

 

[henzington]

It is fine to overbuild your capacity to win a war.

Kinetic are the best right now then lasers with missiles a distant third. This will change in 1.5 but till then they are quite underpowered.

 

[Risa]

Since your ships are of better quality, yet your fleet power isn't much higher than the AI, I suppose AI has more ships than you, maybe 20% more, is that right? If that is the case, you'll certainly lose the fight. For missile vs. missile combat, ship quantity is more important than quality, as missile tends to overkill anyway.

 

[richtern]

missiles, that's your problem.

 

[Alblaka]

missiles, that's your problem.

Please explain how missiles are his sole problem (implying that all factors except for him using missiles are irrelevant), when BOTH sides are using missiles and therefore the enemy should have the same problem, which again would imply there wouldn't be any problem, which again implys that there must be either other factors, or the outcome is RNG.

 

[FrosT37]

Are you the aggressor? It looks like you attacked them before you were ready to attack them. No offence.

There are two uncolonized 80% habitable worlds within your borders that could be used to increase your fleet capacity.

 

[richtern]

Please explain how missiles are his sole problem (implying that all factors except for him using missiles are irrelevant), when BOTH sides are using missiles and therefore the enemy should have the same problem, which again would imply there wouldn't be any problem, which again implys that there must be either other factors, or the outcome is RNG.

It is the root cause of his issue. If he had mass drivers or even lasers I am confident he would have destroyed the larger missile fleet because of the massive overkill, and thus lower damage efficiency, endemic to missiles.

If we must restrict ourselves to superficial causes of his loss it is obviously because he faced a larger fleet. This is doubly so when you consider the implications of his quality advantage. Spelling it out, each of his ships has a higher power value than his opponents thus it takes him less ships to reach 750 power and his opponent correspondingly more to reach 850. This is to his disadvantage because the other side has an even greater advantage in terms of missiles per salvo. As such his mild qualitative advantage is unable to overcome the greater weight of fire.