since they are attack class ships they get a 10% bonus on damage, and they probably have more health then you do. 

In addition you are right that they have missile weaponry but it can be any tier, and finally just a bit of random rolls with the dice but you can almost neglect that.

Higher tier missiles have more health thus need more advanced Flacks to counter them. Also, missiles may have a lower DPS than your guns, but they do WAY more damage when they do hit, and high tier missiles will wreak your weak explorers (explorers have 1500 base HPs, the Pirates 2000 HPs per ships).

Worth mentioning that enemy fleets pick a tactic too. If they went long range, likely their weapons became useful sooner than yours did.

Lorco wrote:

you are right that they have missile weaponry but it can be any tier

Foraven wrote:

Higher tier missiles have more health thus need more advanced Flacks to counter them.

As mentioned in my first paragraph, they have a listed offensive strength of 107 per ship.  I opened my ship editor, selected an attack hull, and tried various combinations of missiles.  2x of the starting missile produces an offensive strength of 107 exactly.  So I'm 99.9% sure that's what they're using.

If you have a specific reason to think my analysis is wrong, please point it out.

Lorco wrote:

since they are attack class ships they get a 10% bonus on damage, and they probably have more health then you do. 

That hardly seems relevant in comparison to all the other differences.  In terms of simple damage ratio, just the fact that my slugs are a tier ahead should more than compensate for both of those.

I'm more interested in why my flak is massively failing.

Antistone wrote:

Lorco wrote:

you are right that they have missile weaponry but it can be any tier

Foraven wrote:

Higher tier missiles have more health thus need more advanced Flacks to counter them.

As mentioned in my first paragraph, they have a listed offensive strength of 107 per ship.  I opened my ship editor, selected an attack hull, and tried various combinations of missiles.  2x of the starting missile produces an offensive strength of 107 exactly.  So I'm 99.9% sure that's what they're using.

If you have a specific reason to think my analysis is wrong, please point it out.

Lorco wrote:

since they are attack class ships they get a 10% bonus on damage, and they probably have more health then you do. 

That hardly seems relevant in comparison to all the other differences.  In terms of simple damage ratio, just the fact that my slugs are a tier ahead should more than compensate for both of those.

I'm more interested in why my flak is massively failing.

If you can, watch the battle live. That should give you an indicator of what is happening. A single flak module can take out two missiles and IIRC, only the flak on the targeted ship acts against the missiles due to the tiny firing arcs. Missiles fire twice (I think) per round. So it sounds like what is happening is that your flak modules are killing two missiles and another two are getting through which is killing your ships, probably with one dying at long range, and the other dying at medium range. Defenses are currently undertuned, so even if you are sporting slightly higher defense, that won't be a sure fire way to avoid losses. The devs are looking into it.

As mentioned in my OP, I did watch the battle, and from the visuals I can see 4 missiles per salvo, but it looks like only 1 is being shot down by flak.  My ships have 2 flak guns each, so if one flak can shoot down 2 missiles, I should be stopping all four, even if only one of my ships gets to use its flak.

So according to you, my flak is only one-quarter as effective as it is supposed to be.

Antistone wrote:

As mentioned in my OP, I did watch the battle, and from the visuals I can see 4 missiles per salvo, but it looks like only 1 is being shot down by flak.  My ships have 2 flak guns each, so if one flak can shoot down 2 missiles, I should be stopping all four, even if only one of my ships gets to use its flak.

So according to you, my flak is only one-quarter as effective as it is supposed to be.

Ah, sorry, scanned over that. It should be two unless they've changed the reload time with the new patch. The two flak modules probably won't have the firing arc to take out both sets of missiles coming from such a close point, so only one is functioning as flak. It's a little hard to tell without seeing the battle.

I have edited my OP with a save file and a precise count salvo-by-salvo of the missiles' fates.  There was exactly one salvo in the battle where my flak actually did shoot down 3 missiles, but the overwhelming preponderance is 1 per salvo.