These are observations, and I will try to keep to the facts of the way the battles rolled out,
I will also at the end make some opinionated suggestions:

This is just observasions in game

~ but there is definitely some issues I'd like to point out.~~

Note:  The caps are just so you see what was being used, not yelling or screaming 

I had a MP partner who was willing to test some functionality of game battle mechanics late game.  

~First test, Medium tier 1 ships, gaurdiands coordinators, Lumen faction,

Nothing but BOMBERS, stacked with SHIELDS, (YELLOW shields, ADVANCED bombers) 

20CC fleet, 5x18 of these gaurdians, 

also included in the fleet, x2 protector ships, each stacked with flotilla shields (the lane shields)

Voydani fleet, x1 carriar Yellow beams, Projectile defense. No repair modules, just intensifier/beams. ALL SHORT RANGE

The lumen fleet gets destroyed at the loss of one voyd carriar.  20cc vs 12cc

Tactics used, SHIELD WALL lumens, all ships in center lane which is a long range lane,  opponent used TURTLE, ship in short range center lane.

~~~Next scenario:  18cc fleet Lumens, all gaurdians, shields, and  ADVANCED FIGHTERS ONLY.

ONE SINGLE Voydani carriar with short range yellow beams and intensifier. using projectile defense.

Same tactics

Tactics used, SHIELD WALL lumens, all ships in center lane which is a long range lane,  opponent used TURTLE, ship in short range center lane.

Carriar destroys whole fleet.

All fighter fleet, vs all bomber fleet, same tech:

18CC gaurdian's stacked with fighters for lumens, x2 gaurdian class vodyani 6cc fleet, stacked with bombers

ALL lumen ships destroyed.  Vodyani gaurdians suffer less than 5% damage.

same defense setup accross both fleets. Only substituting FIGHTER for BOMBER, all ARMOR DEFENSE.

~~~ Next scenario, 

LUMENS 20CC fleet, Armor defense TORPEDO/BOMBER Mix, x2 Hunter, x3 Bomber fleet. 20CC lane flotilla ships included.

VOYD 12CC Fleet, All resource beams of equivelent level, armor defense. x2 carriar's. 

Lumen fleet destroyed.  Voydyani fleet survives little damage

Tactics were BARRAGE FIRE everybody center long range lane, vs TURTLE in center lane.

~~~Scenario from previous engagement

x22CC Small ship Antimatter Laser x2 LR x1 SR Sophon fleet    vs x21CC Carriar x1 destroyerx2 cruiser x2 x3 escort using Torpedo/Bomber/Shield build.

Sophon ships suffer 10% damage,   

GET LUCKY played vs BARRAGE FIRE, every ship stacked in center lane.

Sophon ships win, suffering 20% loss (4 ships destroyed)  This battle was also repeated on a reload, just to see if I "Got Lucky".  The answer, NO, same result, within 3%

Conclusions to be made:

Shields offer very little defensive power at all. Flotilla or Defense Module.  Keep in mind this setup was to try to find a hard counter to a BEAM/LASER fleet.  There is none.  Even pure torpedos couldn't do it in several other encounters.  

Fighers and Bombers You would think are a hard counter to this, because they take 200% or 150% damage on large ships, well, even with SHORT RANGE large ships, using LONG RANGE tactics against them, the medium carriars die.  The pure missle fleet, against beams, DIE.  Fighters do almost NO damage because of the strength of armor in the game currently. Bombers, even with penetration and bonus's they include, do very little.  During each battle, it was watched, the bombers did not make it in time before at least one of there said carriar ships were destroyed.  

It is also important to note that these were of the same tech level engagements.  Builds were known. Also there was no flak/projectile defense of anykind except armor modules.  So fighters and bombers alike had free roam to destroy the ships and could not.

Conclusions to be made:

^^^^Bombers, don't do much^^^^^^^^

^^^^, Fighters, do less,^^^^^^^^

Fighters don't even defend well against bombers, yes we did that test.

NOTE:   All battles were conducted using HUMAN MADE SHIP DESIGNS

If your fighting a autodesigned AI ship, fighters and bombers can kill them, there is no question, its when efficiency at killing comes into question against a human that matters. 

Same medium ship designs on both fleets, one had F+B other had B alone, Fighters, offered little defense against bombers, and did no damage to opponents vessals when using BARRAGE FIRE, and POWER TO SHIELDS. (offense and a defense card) Note: This was two seperate battles.

There is no counter to a resource filled beam/laser fleet, with armor.  Shields in the current state, even stacked flotilla shields on TOP of resource shields, would not let fighters and bombers survive long enough to make it to there objectives and do some damage.  The fighter and bomber ships had included RESOURCE amplifiers, IE extra fighter and bomber damage, projectile damage bonus module, and evasion/jammer setups to try to keep them alive as long as possible, hence the small protector class ships included.  No effective counter found.

Armor is too strong, there is absolutely no reason to bother using any kind of shield.  Penetration just adds complication to this scenario makeing this even more complicated to balance. 

Fighters and Bombers seem to have no applicable situation, even when awarded the resource based quest fighters and bombers.

The way the game calculates Attack Power is in-accurate to a degree.  Many scenarios ran the fleet that won was below the 40% threshhold on the attack power meter when it swings one way to the other.  This may be a result of battle tactics and the rock paper sciccors formula in play.

Opinion's on a potential fix discussed with opponents during these games:

~ base hit points need a large increase.  The reason for this is pretty simple, Fighters and Bombers take time to reach there targets, you want there functionality to increase, you increase survivability, and NOT by buffing armor or shields even more but by increasing BASE HP accross ALL ships. This would have the added benifit of making battles last longer, which could theoritically in our opinions increase the fun factor. 

~  Late game, heros admirals, buff damage to a point of unrealist balance.  This makes heros more important and game changing, which we consider a good thing, however, we would like to be able to use them in different combinations of ship builds rather than one specific resouce laser fleet with armor defense to be most effective.  IE there should a counter available to the player.  

~  If the AI copied the most effective design, it would be a game changer accross all difficulty levels.  The AI wouldn't need to cheat if it was given max damage schematics on how to build ships.

note:  Most of this was done is as controlled of a enviroment it could have been done in.  This information is to help the devolopers balance the ships to a better extent than they are currently.

Also, there are countless battles, variables, ect that could be drawn upon.  I would be happy to provide help/questions/ any kind of information regarding ship design.

~ base hit points need a large increase.  The reason for this is pretty simple, Fighters and Bombers take time to reach there targets, you want there functionality to increase, you increase survivability, and NOT by buffing armor or shields even more but by increasing BASE HP accross ALL ships. This would have the added benifit of making battles last longer, which could theoritically in our opinions increase the fun factor.

Battles lasting multiple rounds would certainly increase the dynamics of cards, etc. The problem is that fleets can 'bypass' defenses this way. I'd like to see fleets 'locked' in combat if they engage, unable to leave without a retreat action. 

Aitarus wrote:

There are HP increases incoming for medium/large ships per Kynrael as I understand.

I would actually advocate that shield capacity should be upped significantly to ensure higher shield uptime and more mitigation to energy. Not only that, every single weapon module needs to have its damage output nerfed - especially that of the strategic ones; as you have noticed their power level is disproportionate.

I made a spreadsheet here which you can refer to with direct comparison of all existing live values for weapon and defense modules: it should be clear from that just how sharp the progression curve is and why we experience battles in which entire fleets are taken out within literal seconds of the fight starting. (The mod values are just what I'm testing in game.)

I think your link is broken!

I had suspected beams were overtuned - I've seen the AI's beam-only fleets crush my own fleets despite superior weapon (mainly missile) tech and enhanced hulls whenever I let them fight at equivalent command points. Also noticed beam weapons clearly firing in the first volley along with all other weapon types despite supposedly only having up to medium range. When they fire in large battles, coordinators/battleships die near-instantly.

Dragar wrote:

Aitarus wrote:

There are HP increases incoming for medium/large ships per Kynrael as I understand.

I would actually advocate that shield capacity should be upped significantly to ensure higher shield uptime and more mitigation to energy. Not only that, every single weapon module needs to have its damage output nerfed - especially that of the strategic ones; as you have noticed their power level is disproportionate.

I made a spreadsheet here which you can refer to with direct comparison of all existing live values for weapon and defense modules: it should be clear from that just how sharp the progression curve is and why we experience battles in which entire fleets are taken out within literal seconds of the fight starting. (The mod values are just what I'm testing in game.)

I think your link is broken!

Huh, thanks for the heads up - seems to be an issue with the site. I replaced it with the link text and if you click it still redirects to G2G.

Aitarus wrote:

There are HP increases incoming for medium/large ships per Kynrael as I understand.

I would actually advocate that shield capacity should be upped significantly to ensure higher shield uptime and more mitigation to energy. Not only that, every single weapon module needs to have its damage output nerfed - especially that of the strategic ones; as you have noticed their power level is disproportionate.

I made a spreadsheet here (https://1drv.ms/x/s!AgL5PgEX3VOAgdEs275ch3P8JzMj1w) which you can refer to with direct comparison of all existing live values for weapon and defense modules: it should be clear from that just how sharp the progression curve is and why we experience battles in which entire fleets are taken out within literal seconds of the fight starting. (The mod values are just what I'm testing in game.)

That's an awesome table. I was looking for that long time.