What a terribly frustrating game. I have played for over 10 hours now, replaying a 1v1 from various save points. Each time it ends up in a huge fleet engagement where the ai and I bring in pretty even fleets and it (AI) ends up mopping up the gravity well with me. i have researched pretty much every facet of combat, including the long range cannon that i keep lobbing at his few remaining planets. and i have a balanced fleet, with a few level 9 cap ships and a few level 6 or so and every support role well represented. Anyway, in fleet engagements my shots do little damage, and his seem to do double. my shields don't recharge and his rarely go down. I lose all my capital ships and he doesn't even lose many frigates. i have his economy in such a bind, and mine is so strong, that i even have tried to just focus on single ships, figuring that I am in a good position to rebuild. but quite simply they will not go down. i know about shield mitigation, but this is quite simply BS. what am i doing wrong here?

i have everything set to auto attack, because i have about 150 ships and i can manually do that.
i have tried both auto ability and manual ability and neither work.
i like this game (it reminds me of conquest: frontier wars), but I feel like the ai is cheating.