Help with getting surrounded easily

Really I'm not sure if surrounded was your main problem, but let me pick apart your fleet since that's one thing that will apply to almost all situations.

Your fleet, like many new players, is much too dependent on capitalships and possibly too small for 2 hours into the game. Capitalships are vital for their special abilities but it general its best to focus on quality for quantity. Until your caps get to very high levels frigates are a better deal for the cost and fleet supply, and having more capitalships in a gravity well causes them to share XP, slowing their level progression and making it even harder for them to break even with frigates. As a rough rule I would have dozens of frigates for each capitalship (obviously a lower ratio if you have a lot of heavy cruisers and carriers), as they will provide most of the raw firepower of your fleet.

You should also try to beat the AI to a titan if possible, titans keep their levels when they are destroyed, so getting it out and gaining XP early can be decisive.

The other main thing is, did the AI have a bigger Empire than you? If he had more planets than you, especially before he killed the Vasari, that is a warning sign that you might need to work on expanding faster early game. Just focus on your basic planet population upgrades and extractors while maxing out your starting fleet supply and getting the minimum required labs/techs to expand (Corvettes, relevant planet colonizations, perhaps some early other combat frigates etc.), you can worry about really developing each planets potential and maxing out the tech tree after you have at least as big an Empire as everyone else and all the easy militia planets have been taken.

If you want some more tips, I'll just plug my steam guide. I do need to streamline its contents a little but it should have a lot of good information for you (as well as some reasoned opinions as to what is good or not, such as why you shouldn't build a Kol   ). 

I'm not sure if they had more planets than me, because my scouts were stopped due to the fact that i ended up hitting the main choke points of the enemy capital and main other worlds pretty quickly and the vasari were to the east, so i had about 10 planets available and 7-8 of them were already colonized by me.  I think there were 25 planets total on the map, i had 8 i knew about 4 advent planets, and i assumed that they took over the vasari's 3 planets pretty early on so i know their empire was about even to mine, maybe a little bigger. I was just surprised that they built their titan and fleet so quickly, less than an hour into the match. They easily had 13 capital ships probably more, 30 frigate/cruisers and were simultaneously attacking all 5 border planets at once, and if i split my fleet into 5 units i wouldn't stand a chance against the titan or anything really. My economy was definately superior to theirs, due to me maxing out civic industry research.   I tried to expand out quickly but as i said, I hit the enemy capitals pretty quickly within only 7 colonizations, maybe it was just bad luck and they got placed too close to me.     

   I'm playing as tec loyalist so I was trying to take advantage of their defensive and economic strong points while still expanding as much as possible, but it becomes much harder to split fleets up to protect all those planets without spreading them so thin that their too weak to do anything about the advent random assaults.   Part of the problem might have been that i waited too long to get the novalith out, and they managed to put up a star base with emergancy governement on the advent capital so i couldn't just destroy it. should I have gone for the novalith earlier maybe? How far do you reccomend a tec loyalist to expand while still being able to adequately take advantage of the good tec defenses?

For TEC Loyalist it can't hurt to build 2 or 3 capital ships if you reserach the extra 10% xp bonus in your territory.

Never go defensive. Active defense is ultimately better in sins than passive defense (so FLEET > Structures, and by a huge amount), ONLY build starbases on border planets though better to have a big fleet with a titan.

Novaliths? It is a more fair strategy not using superweapons at all, but if you like them you can do serious damage with them, but never rush them, they are not game ending (unless you have capital victory on, but this is a cheat in my opinion... killing his home with 2 novas while he is even stronger than you)

Basic pieces of advice for TL:

build many frigates (corvettes are frigates too), fleet composition should be always efficient against the opponent, but Javelis spamming always works if you keep enemy corvettes at bay, and building carriers if your opponent is not light frigate hevy is a good idea.

Always scout, always know what ships your opponent has, and build countering ships.

Titan is not a strong offensive one, maybe better to have 2-4 high level capital ships, preferably a marza for starter, get level6 ability fast and laugh at AI ships dying in no time. But if you can use Ankylon well, than build it fast.

I don't recommend defensive tactics as these are uneffective in this game, best to have is a starbase that kills AI fleet with your fleet's help, than counterattack immediately and take 1-2 planets.

KOL is bad, weak in many fields, it may look awesome but it is the least effective TEC capitalship, drains antimatter in no time. Build Marza or Akkan for starter, having a Sova is a good idea, 1 Dunov maybe. KOL only if your opponent has so much strike craft you cannot handle with flak or fighters. But never exceed 2-3 capital ships unless all of them is at least level6 or 7, if you plan to get a TITAN, only 1 capital ship, to maximize titan leveling. They share XP and will be hard to level up, and until level4-5 frigates are better cost- and fleet suply-wise than capitalships.

I honestly don't know what the hell i'm doing wrong, I started another game this morning and was doing great. It was on the fire and ice map. there's one really resource heavy ice world and one resource heavy volclanic world, then 3 worlds for each teams capital   (me vs advent loyalist vs vasari loyalist)  and the rest are asteroids.   I moved up captured a couple asteroids and managed to build a fleet of 1 akkan, 5 javelin, 4 hoshiko, 3 percheran carrier, 2 cobalt, 2 shriva corvette and was able to set up a star base and hanger defense right on the only choke poin next to the advent capital essentially boxing them into their own capital :)     then i proceeded to take the ice planet and the two surroundingn asteroids creating 3 trade ports which connected to my star bases trade bays. I was making nearly 20/second even after fleet costs,   I had two fleets, the first was  1 argonev star base with factory, 8 squad hanger and hull increased to 9000, 1 marza dreadnaught, 4 percheran carriers, 2 hoshiko, 5 javelis LRM, and an extra 9 bomber squads and 10 fighters from the frigates. This was my defense fleet to keep the advent boxed in, then I added another star base so i could move that fleet if needed without the advent immediately breaking through, and my economy was great so i could handle it.   My main fleet had 1 Akkan battlecruiser, 1 Sova capital carrier, 2 percheron, 1 krosov, 3 garda, 4 hoshiko, 4 javelis, 2 shriken, 2 cobalt, 5 fighter/7 bomber squads.  I moved that one out to the east to take the fire planet that was vasari controlled, but it turned out they had a fleet twice my size only 30 minutes into the game,  so i called in my other fleet because my sova was nearly destroyed, then the freaking advent attack of all times to attack :\   anyway I had to pull back anyway because the vasari had like 40 frigates, 3 battleships and 2 battlecruisers for a total of 5 capitals.  then i drove off the advent, and tried to rebuild my destroyed sova capital and 12 frigates i lost. then the damn vasari attack my capital planet with 2 battleships and a dozen frigates. I rush to build some extra frigates and a new sova and barely manage to drive them off.  I then had to rebuild the sova AGAIN after being destroyed for the 3rd time, and try to attack the volcanic world but the same result happened.   I pulled back and started building a much bigger fleet, and a novalith.  I was then attacked in 3 places by fleets almost as big as mine at each world, including a vasari roaming starbase.  I shot the novalith at the advent homeworld , then the vasari volcanic world, but nearly lost all my fleet before retreating.  I have NO capitals left, and only about 10 frigates, with the vasari right on my doorstep from 3 directions, I've been surrounded again, i don't get it?

This is not a big fleet.. 30 light, 30 corvettes or 30 long range, that is a sufficient big fleet. Problem is you think that fleet is large enough, but you are wrong. You need to have many many frigates to ensure your reign on the map. No use of early carriers, don't build them unless you have like 50 smaller frigates.

Always have a fleet at least 4/5th of the strongest enemy fleet, this way they cannot crush you easily, and remember, you can easily contain an AI with starbases. Forget strike craft on the bases, you need hull and weapons on it. If you focus on destroying enemy capital ships the AI gets a serious disadvantage, and always defend yours by fleeing them away if hitpoints get under x percent.

Well that was within 5-10 minutes of starting the game, I'm not necessarily calling it an "adequate fleet" i'm just saying that's what I had at the time, I had split the force into two to defend with but all in total i had 3 capital ships and 29 frigate/cruiser/corvette's which would probably be ok if i didn't have to split them up  to defend 2-3 different corners of the map, I don't understand how you could make 3 fleets with 30+ ships each within such a small time and still have money for necessary things like scouts, economic research, frigate factories, trade ports, etc..    

           My typical strategy is to build 2 or 3 scouts and auto explore, make an akkan for colonizing as my first capital ship, then make 4-5 cobalt's, while putting up 1 military and 1 civic research facility. I then colonize the nearest asteroids, increase taxes from negative and place extractors at them and my capital planet. About that time my research is finishing so i build 3-4 Javelis LRM's to have a total of 8-10 frigates and go for a planet to colonize. After that I do some random civic/military/defense research so i can build starbases/repair bays when i get to a choke point, and usually make a marza dreadnaught as my 2nd capital ship.

            I try to string some trade ports to maximize income, and usually hit one choke point (don't seem to have much luck reaching the other AI's choke point)  Once I do that I build a couple repair bays and get a raloz starbase builder ready. I split my fleet into two groups, the marza and about 1/3rd of my frigates stay at the choke point until the starbase is done, then the Akkan and other 2/3rds of frigates continue colonizing or holding off hit and run raids.   This is where things begin to go awry, I have to constantly rush my offensive half of the fleet from planet to planet to hold off hit and runs, because just building a few frigates and sending them there isn't near enough due to the fact that the enemy usually has about 3 groups of 1-2 capital ship + 15-20 frigates attacking all over.

            This is the problem I keep having, I can't keep up with the constant random raids from every border planet without splitting up my fleet even more which means i'll definately lose. Somehow i need to figure out how to make the 30+ ship fleets you're mentioning without running out of money and metal/crystal completely, or maybe i shouldn't research at all? It seems like it help bring in a hell of alot more money mid game than if i didn't research, but maybe straight firepower is still better, i just don't know if i can afford to maintain and replace that many ships without adequate economy.

Wrong, trade ports are not necessary, research is not necessary

Let me tell you how it works if you want to be efficient:

1. trade, only research it and build trade ports if you have pacified the frontiers and are not in immediate invasion danger of a bigger fleet.

2. scouts are cheap, I don't see what is the problem here, build 2-3 and you are happy and will always see the bordering enemy worlds if you have the sensor ability on them.

3. research only necessary things, like useful ship types (corvette, long range, starbase builder if it is needed), hull, armor, weapon upgrades, BUT, only if you have a large fleet or have too many resources to use instantly.

4. never stop ship building until you feel it's enough. 1-2 capital ships and 50 frigates will be always good in the beginning. Don't rush carriers, light frigates eat them too fast if you can't kill those fast.

You need 2 military labs for Javelis. well you concentrate too much on research and static defenses while you should be building LIGHT FRIGATES. if you have 20 cobalts then you may add another ship type, no need to rush for javelis, these are stopped quite easily by corvettes if they are in small numbers. 2nd capital ship is not very necessary, you are better off if you build frigates intead, and wait for your first capital ship to reach level5 or 6. Choice is good, Akkan is good starter, Marza is excellent 2nd, but no need to rush 2nd cap, the advantage is not that high.

Huge waste of money early game building trade ports, you need to have a sufficient large fleet first. Again, no advantage from rushing to get these, huge economic investment giving time for AI to attack as he does not invest that money in trade, instead he builds ships. Your problem is that you don't have a big enough early game fleet to fend of even small attacks. Try building more small ships like cobalts and shrikens, they will make your defense excellent, as these can move, unlike your starbase and gauss guns. Starbase with repair is not very necessary if you have a nice fleet, but can help if you have 2 frontiers at once.

The early game economy from the few colonized worlds and built extractors is enough for fielding like 50 smaller ships without problems, better if you research the crystal and metal extraction increase and terran or desert population increase (depending on what planets you have), trust me, from online skilled 5v5s I know it quite well you cannot waste money there. No need to rush trade ports and overspend money in research, way better to build a big fleet and kill small AI fleets one by one on your threatened worlds. Once your situation is more peaceful, you can build trade and research useful stuff like new ship types (like carrier) or upgrade your starbases, or eventually building a titan and going on a counter attack.

I think i'm doing better now, I managed to get a fleet of 1 akkan, 1 marza and about 30-35 frigates composed of mainly javelis, cobalt, garda flak, and hoshiko with a few carrier, cielo, kodiak etc. thrown in.  I've built two star bases in strategic choke points I've made my vasari enemy abandon his capital several times, nearly destroyed his titan foundry. and i now have control over roughly 55% of the map. I'm still finishing my back up fleet, which is currently using 1 capital ship, and abou 17-20 frigates. I waited on the trade ports a bit, and put them in order as i conquered once i was sure they were safely placed, I'm now making 28/second even after 17/second fleet upkeep, I've upgraded the starbases with 6,000 and 9000 hull and higher weapons, along with the self destruct in case of emergency. Now i just have to keep those squirrely vasari away from that titan foundry and i think i'll be ok.  Thanks alot, you're advice combined with my style seems to work pretty well, although i'm only about 1 hour 15 min in so it's still possible for me to lose. At least i'm finally managing hard AI vs 2 opponents now.

never fucking mind, I just got RAPED out of nowhere, the same enemy who was being torn to bits with hardly any ships left ALL OF A SUDDEN in less than 2 minutes conjured up 15 capital ships!!! 3 moving vasari starbases and over 100 frigates. sometime i feel like this game if freakin rigged, i had a fleet 3 times their size, i had 4 capital ships at levels 5, 6, 6, and 7, 60 frigates, 3 fully upgraded starbases and and a level 4 ankylon titan, there's no way that a handful of vasari inches from death could pull the kind of firepower needed to destroy that fleet, i mean come on this is normal mode. lol.  oh, well. at least I'm getting experience, and I seem to be doing a little better each time i play.

I guess i just need to keep practicing, because this game is alot different from any other rts i've played. I had no trouble beating starcraft, civ, command and conquer, etc.. and alot more, but this game is giving me alot of trouble for some reason. I'm starting to get a better strategy though.

It is indeed different, but it is quite beatable. Anyone who is good at this game needed a fair amount of practice.

Linking us some screenshots of the fleet numbers that beat you might help. One guy who was losing badly to an AI said the enemy had 7 capitalships. Turned out when he linked the screenshot of the fleet numbers, those 7 capitalships turned out to all be Progenitor motherships, whose shield regeneration ability was single handedly responsible for his defeat. Once he knew to destroy/interrupt/AM drain them before anything else, he did fine.

well, that's impossible, if he is being defeated he can no way build a huge late game fleet.. you missed many things in your game if this happened, a huge fleet cannot be undetected for a long time, and the fleet you mentioned is a one that cannot be built under 1-2 minutes from nowhere. And Hard AI is not that monster, if you played Normal, well, that AI is lame so it cannot happen.

Best advice I can give is practice, 2v2 with hard or normal AI's on random medium map is the best way, you can see what your ally is doing and maybe learn from him (or see what the other AI's may be doing based on your ally), and you only need to handle 1 AI until you get enough experience to feel things in the game, and once he is done, you can kill the remaining one if your ally was unsuccesful.

If you still have problems maybe you shoudl read some nice strategy tips or watch some pro replays, they help a lot.

The main problem you have is how you are thinking about you fleet composition. When exactly to make trade, research and upgrades comes with experience.

For example researching Garda Flak ships only to make 3 of them is a waste of time and resources. They dont even become useful until you have at the very minimum 10 and preferably 20. Researching LRMs to make 5 of them is pointless. Same goes carriers, ceilos etc... There is nothing wrong with mass capital ships when you fighting AI but you need to think what ships you are getting and why as your main force.

If you want to easily beat AI and not have all these problems while you are learning the game; start with LFs, dont reasearch other ship types until you have 30+. Then add vettes / lrms in 10s+, not 2-3 of each. Teching carriers and making 3 wont achieve anything. I also find turrets work suprisingly well against the AI early on and saves you having to run back or get expensive starbases. From your post i can guarantee that you had a smaller fleet than the AI in all of your games.

Quantity will always beat quality until you can utilise each ship's strength etc.. Also try not to lose capital ships and just move them out of the gravity well and to your repair bays. Dont need to micro other ships until you know what you doing. For everything else refer to Turchanys post above.

It takes a while to destroy a fleet, and during that time the enemy can build new ships to replace the ones he lost. So you have say 10 minutes for the fight and 10 minutes extra: that's 20 minutes in total and that's enough time to build a very big fleet, especially if you have enough savings to build it.

Also, the hard AI is very unlike the normal AI, because it gets a *lot* of extra income: credits, metal, crystal. If you think you're doing fine, then the AI is doing 2x as fine.

It takes a while to out-eco the AI and for that you need lots of trade ports and starbases with double trade port upgrades.

In the meantime, keep it busy by defending and using your starbase as backup. Always fight near your starbase and have lots of repair stations near the starbase - why: because they keep the starbase alive for so much longer.

Also, if you can, make sure you ally one of the AIs by sending envoys, it will make your game easier.

Well those numbers aren't how many i made. For example with the garda's I made 10 of them, but 7 were destroyed before i got to the point I was describing, and I had about 10-12 javelis and 10 hoshiko's too which were destroyed down to a few each, but as i've been told that still isn't enough, that I should have like 20-30 of each type of ship. It's just real hard to get a balance with it, if I focus on building 40-50 ships and continually replacing them every time 5-10 get destroyed after each small raid it makes it hard for me to afford to build more without research upgrades and trade stations to up my economy, but if i put up trade stations and research i have to neglect building any more than 20-30 ships because i spend alot on research and trade stations, military labs, etc.. 

Obviously building your economy costs a decent amount of money immediately for a much larger return later, but by the time the economy is large enough to allow the building of 60-100 ship fleets I'm already being annihilated. Which ships do you reccomend me building in the early and mid games? A couple people said just to build 20-30 Cobalts as the early game fleet, but I've also heard several people say that Cobalt's suck. I usually always start with an Akkan even before people recommended it as a good first Capital, then I usually get a \marza once I'm trying to take down tough planets at enemy chokepoints. I'll put the Akkan and Marza together with mostly Javelis, Corvettes, Garda's, along with a handful of Krosov (to siege with Marza), Hoshiko (for repair), and Percheron (for fighter/bomber support) so that once the Marza's done destroying the planet with planet raze, the Akkan can colonize it. Then in my backup fleet I use one Capital ship; usually a Sova but those get destroyed way too easily, or a Kol battleship, but I've heard such bad things about kols so I don't know what Cap to use for the second fleet.  Regarding the Sova Carrier, should I keep it back away from the fight like you should with light carriers like the Percheron? I figured that because it's a Capital ship that it would be wasteful not to take advantage of it's higher than most frigates firepower, even though it's guns are weaker than most other Cap ships. But seeing it get destroyed after telling it to retreat with nearly 2,000 hull left at level 4-5 several times makes me wonder if that's such a good idea. 

      One last thing, I never really have any problems against 1 AI in normal or hard, but against 2 AI's even on normal I start to see those problems; should I practice with 2 on 2 battles with one of the AI's as my ally? Would that be harder than 1 on 1 battles but a little easier than 2 on 1, allowing me to ease into 2 on 1 battles? Because I'm starting to wonder whether if the reason that I'm losing is that I end up spending too much time focusing on fighting or expanding into 1 of the AI's territory and allowing the other to become too powerful.  Or that it's just too overwhelming and I need to practice my multitasking by putting some of the burden on an ally, but the fact that the AI becomes stupid when they're on your side might still make it harder than just 1 on 1 matches. What do you guys think?  I'm sorry for all the stupid questions, I know I sound like an idiot noob; especially after hearing someone say the normal AI is lame after I actually got beaten by it twice in a row -__- lol.

I personally prefer Corvettes as they move faster and are better against siege frigates, which allows for faster expansion, but the LF+Corvette combo is definitely a great early game starting fleet, since they counter each others main weaknesses. Cobalts could arguably be the worse LF, since the Disciple vessel is a bit more efficient and the Skirmisher has that useful self repair ability (though at the expense of firepower, and I don't think many Vasari players really use this ship a lot), but there really isn't a huge gab between them. Cobalts sucked a lot more before Rebellion since Long Range Frigates did not have a good counter.

Akkan followed by a Marza is certainly a good cap order. For the frigates though Corvettes and Hoshikos are my only must have ships for my early/mid game fleet. Javelis are great at killing capitalships and light frigates, and can double as a non-Vasari starbase counter with the Akkan's Targeting uplink ability at higher levels, and the Garda's will absolutely destroy corvettes, but if your enemy doesn't have a lot of these ships I wouldn't rush to get them. As for the Krosovs, I sometimes go entire games without getting Siege frigates. They should usually only be built if you already clearly won or your opponent has a lot of planets without any defenses, in which they make decent harassers. As annoying as it is to have your capitalships out of action just bombing planets, its usually better than sinking money and fleet supply into fairly expensive ships that are near useless in a fight.

I actually find the Sova to be a very competent brawler, especially early game. Its base weapon damage is pretty pathetic but thanks to its missile batteries and lots of strike craft, I wouldn't be surprised if it out DPSed the Kol, and before flak frigates and fighters are deployed 3 squads of bombers are extremely useful against enemy capitalships or taking out militia heavy cruisers. Late game it is indeed a lot less useful, and here you should use it more as a carrier, sending out fighters and using embargo from out of enemy range if they have a large fleet.

Just some trivia, before Corvettes Sova rushing was actually the main TEC strategy, as getting Embargo on your opponents homeworld is so devastating economically without many other planets, and if you happen to be very close to an enemy's homeworld I'd try picking it as your first or second (but get it built ASAP) capitalship. Try it out on point blank just for fun, great practice for rush strategies and you can kill even the highest level AIs if done properly.

When the fleets get large enough in Sins, this can happen to almost any capitalship (high level Kortul and Corsev being the main exceptions). If 800-2000 fleet supply worth of ships focus fire on a single 50 fleet supply capitalship there is very little you can do to save that cap. The AI fortunately rarely uses focus fire very well though, so its less of an issue in single player, but if your caps are indeed being destroyed very quickly you might want to keep them all on the edge of the fight and only commit them when their special abilities will do the most good.

Also, your enemies don't have phase jump inhibitors do they? If you tried to retreat from a planet with one of those, yeah the chances of your cap ships dying go up dramatically.

Typically in a 2v1 situation against the AI, you need to read the map well and find a good chokepoint or two that can be used to totally cut off one AI and fortify them really well so you can focus most of your attention on destroying the other. The AI is generally not very good at attacking heavily fortified planets, so a fully upgraded starbase supported by 3-5 repair bays can devestate most early-mid game and possibly late game AI fleets with little difficulty. If its a TEC AI it occasionally can overpower this with obcene numbers of Ogrov torpedo cruisers, but against most AI less than unfair that should give you enough time to defeat one of the AIs, giving you more planets and a large economy to kill the other.

Sounds like you have a decent understanding of the game, I would guess your main problem is either execution, mainly taking too long (the normal AI may become a lot harder if you leave it alone long enough to develop), or misspending resources on things you don't need (most new players, especially from the 4X genres, spend way too much on stat increasing research early on when they should be building ships and expanding).

QFT, please read that and think about it, as its probably the most useful advice you ll get in regards to singleplayer or even multiplayer.

     Hmm, ok. I think I'm going to try another game and see if i can apply some of your advice. I also should write down the chart with the rock paper scissor weakness list of all the frigates and keep the notebook with me so i'll know exactly what to build without having to alt+tab out and forgetting what I was looking for by the time i get back to the game.   

     The one thing you didn't answer was about 2v2 matches with AI as my ally, do you think that would still be harder than 1v1? I wonder if it would help me get used to 2 opponents without being as hard as straight 2v1 by putting some of the burden on the AI.

And thanks alot for the help you've given me

If you ally with an AI that is next to you then you can make pacts with the AI, which will give you several boosts. The enemy AIs that are allied will have such benefits... why shouldn't you have them? For example I think the trade and armor pacts of the TEC are really good. Such games are more entertaining than 1v1 games imo.

2v2 games won't be harder I think, AIs are really good at keeping each other busy while you fight the other AI.

Well for some reason that doesn't happen, the AI's both seem to only focus on me, or at least focus on me more. I must be unlucky i guess o_0

If you like i can play a 2v2 game with you when im free so you can see what we mean by some of advices in the thread. It would probably be a good idea to save a replay of it for future reference.

Im JinglyCat on ICO/Steam if you need any help or want to play a practice game let me know.

i'm really getting SO sick of this game, I literally sat there for 5 minutes screaming "MOVE F$$$TARD MOVE DAMIT" because my capital ship refused to leave an enemy planet, it had 2,650 hull left and was only up against 2 capitals and a couple frigates, outmatched but still not enough to destroy it quickly. I kept telling it to leave over and over again, i tried retreat; that wouldn't work, then i tried move, that wouldn't work, then retreat again, then move again, each time i'd wait 30 seconds just in case, nope wouldn't do it. This crap has happened to me nearly every game, like 6 times in total i believe, and it's really pissing me off, anybody else have this happen where the game is freakin rigging it to where your cap ship won't leave? and before you ask no there wasn't a phase destabilizer thing i destroyed every device in that gravity well before the help showed up, and now i've lost my level 6 sova the best ship i had and i might as well give up again -__-  Normal difficulty? yeah right, I had less trouble beating dark souls on new game+++ 

I'm sorry about the complaining, but i've never had this kind of trouble with ANY game, even super hard one's like super ghost and goblins, dead space 2 hardcore mode, dark souls ng+, demon souls ng+, even other RTS are nothing like this. I had an amazing fleet too, i did just like you guys recommended, i made 25 cobalts, 18 corvettes, 23 Javelis, and had started making some more cruisers and managed to make 10 Percheran and 12 Hoshiko. Then i had 2 capitals both level 6; 1 akkan and 1 sova, for a total of 88 frigates and 2 capitals, after two battles i'm down to 1 akkan, 8 corvettes, 8 hoshiko, 7 cobalts, 5 javelis, and 2 percheran

Was either of those 2 disabling capitals (Akkan, Egg, Radiance). You can always try manual move over the edge of gravity well and then jump order as this tactic is always faster. For some reason with auto path finding ships always have to jump on corner of "jump square" 

Hidden PJI or another capital ship disabling your Sova. Upload a replay if you like.

I recommend using this strategy always, as it is the best way of keeping capital ships and TITANS alive. Just order the ship to jump to safety, see where it wants to go for the jump, order the ship so it will go through that point, align it so it faces the right direction and give jump order (do not let him automatically screw around at the edge of the well, if there are ships next to it it will never start jumping). you can only fail this way if there is a Phase jump inhibitor or a disabling capitalship. If this is the case your capital ship is dead in most cases..

Hm, if your opponent had heavy cruisers, this level of loss is not surprising, and AI likes to build those. And if you accidentally let your ships go near a starbase your losses go up significantly.