This is the "tie rule" that was introduced in DA.

Since ships always fire back even if they're destroyed now (DA/TA), with the exception of the first round of combat when a civ with the Super Warrior i.e. First Strike ability initiates the attack, it is possible for two fleets to destroy each other.

Since GC2 doesn't support MAD (mutually assured destruction), the tie rule was introduced.

The ship (not sure how it works exactly for fleets) with the highest attack survives the combat with 1 hp.

It's gaining hp due to leveling up by killing your ships, but it should only gain a couple at a time-10 is outrageous, especially for a 22 hp ship.

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Since you aren't playing the Arceans or a race with the Super Warrior SA, you have a couple of options.
-You can build ships with sufficient defense to survive the DL ship (75% of his fleet's attack in defense on a single ship-more is better, up to 100%).
-You can build a ship with higher attack than his ship.
-You can have a fleet that he can't destroy in one round.  For this, you need logistics, and tiny hulls.  At this point, it doesn't matter what weapons they have on them, so long as they each have a weapon.  Your goal is to have at least one more tiny ship than he has weapons on his ship-so if he's fielding say 8 black hole generators, you'd need a fleet of 9 tiny ships, or 18 logistics.

Thanks for the pointers.  Was unaware of the 1 point rule.  Seems quite favorable for the DL.

I am 17 months into the Achilless Heel mission, suicidal level.  DL has 3 escort ships and a defender ship with 22 hit points and circa 114 beam weapons.  So to take out these ships it looks like I would need at least 4*8+1 = 33 tiny ships + starbases to slow them down + troop transports + ships to counteract their new builds.  WOW

I guess a restart with a change of strat is in order - there is plently of $$$ in the game to be had from the allies.  No more organic building.  Just labs, then buy ships.  Will colonize the nearest 3 planets to produce these ships.

Yes using a fleet of tiny ships is the key to destroying dreadlord ships - you don't even need starbase support, just go and wipe them out, it is almost toooo easy once you know how!

Just keep an eye on what defences the dreadlord ships are using and change your weapon type accordingly, otherwise you could easily end up facing invunerable dreadlord ships again!

In the DL campaign, i think in some missions you are stuck with 1 weapon type.... these are my favourite missions ever, because it is then not so easy to beat the dreadlord ships because of their defences!!!

Well, it depends on the situation really, fighting on 2 fronts it's much better to design seperate ships... but if you are in a corner and fighting several enemies using different weapons, whom will all come from 1 direction, your better off making each ship have appropriate defenses for all those weapons, since you would not be gaurenteed to have all appropriate ships in the best spot at the best time. And you would likely lose more ships that fight the wrong enemy.

Although in reality, either way I usually stack on a bit of defense of each regardless of the situation... I am assuming everyone gets Eyes of the Universe on any difficulty (it's hard not to get it). Playing suicidal difficulty, I rarely have any problem, since as you implied above, the AI is so dumb from a tactical standpoint, you really don't even need to go to those lengths of designing that many different ships to be able to take on every other specific ship in the first place. Usually ships with a defensive variety in fleets has no problem dealing with anything on the map. If you play to try to take as few possible losses as possible in a game, you method would be the best (although a bit more time consuming and a tad more expensive upgrading to various designs when the need would arise).

The thing is, the AI is extremely slow in countering the weaponry you are using, so slow in fact, it's hard to ever actually see the AI do so to any means that would actually matter. I always pick 1 weapon path to go down, but since defenses are so cheap to research, and since they don't take up much space, it's easy enough to pile enough defense on so that way your ship won't have to be upgraded if you decide to take on an enemy with different weaponry down the line.

But I guess it comes down to how much time you want to spend on each turn, I tend to to prefer to just pump out ships that can handle any situation and end a game that I know I'm going to win 1/8th way through (I don't scoremonger).

Now that you mentioned that, I should try playing on a similar basis... I did lose quite a bit of ships in my current game, and I am sometimes stunned at the number of losses in the end stats screen. (Espcially troops killed, when it is at like 100 billion or w/e, I almost feel guilty lol).

Perhaps I should give that a try, to see 'how few ships I can lose' during a game! As well as 'how few troops I can lose'. I'm sure it matters and probably makes a huge difference.

Too bad Metaverse doesn't have a 'high score' for that. Winning Militarily with fewest losses. You could possibly be in that spot!

You would almost have to make sure you go neutral... for the reduction in upgrade costs that it gives you (i think it is neutral), or perhaps one of the galactic improvements you can make by going neutral allows that (of course can't remember all this off the top of my head). Do you usually play a specific moral choice?

Typically i will go Neutral yes - mainly because of the neutrality learning centres and neutral shipping.

And because i do like a hard fight, i almost never get round to upgrading any ships save for the rare tactical emergency. The second i have some new ships in place, i am selling the old ones like crazy!!