Overview:

1.Is the AI getting free strategic resources or support systems?

2.Why is no elerium spawning on the insane map but lots of everything else? (set on rare) Also strategic resources don't seem rare when set on rare unless there place holding the elerium that should have spawned.

3. Anyone else come across this?

So I am playing an insane map, all resources and planets are set on rare except for anomaly's. I meet the Altarians and eventually we are at war. I send my fleet to meet them, I out gun them 2 to 1 so I engage.

Me---- long range disruptors ,  heavy armor based defense, some shield and missile protection.  Med hulls

Them--- T1 show room floor kenetic , minituarized, long range , armor based defense, lacking on shield protection. Med hulls.

~should be easy victory right?

 My ships didn't even put a scratch on their fleet. So I immediately rush on some beam focus tech so I can at least hit the broad side of a space barn. Now I need elerium to even put a ship out with this tech but there is not one peace out in the galaxy. There are tons of all the other resources out there but no elerium in site. So I start looking at the trade options in the diplomacy screen to find no one has any ether. hmm

So later I find a lone Altarian gunboat ship, kinetic based, flying around and engage it with a 8 to 1 ratio. That one ship still has the wax on it's paint and my whole fleet annihilated,,, something starts to feel fishy now. My ships are by default harder to hit, theirs are not and there only base advantage is there ship speed. I rush to get jamming technology to unbalance the playing field on them and after researching targeting assist I get no jamming tech to put on my ships. eh?

It feels like the Altarains are getting free resources to put on support systems because they are not mining any at all, just ascension crystals. I am not sure why my jamming systems are not unlocking because its researched already. 

The bottom line is , the Alterians will win hands down if I don't find any elerium to get a weapons solution on them. It's like the beginning of battle star galactic when 3 lone fighters power down a whole squadron and duck shoot em. I do not know what systems there current ships are using other than weapons so I'm blind as a bat in that area because I can't get any intel whats so ever on em.

As of now I'm just shelfing this save because all I can do is gorilla attack their star bases so they can't reach too invade me, but eventually the logistics map scaling will make that strat obsolete. 

As a request it would be paramount if we could see what support systems a ship is using because what ever they got on there ships can't be countered atm and zerging isn't even an option because there just untouchable. 

Lastly, could someone tell me the in game command to reveal the whole map, I wanna see if there is even one piece of elerium out there, its 75% explored atm.