[Master Belisarius]

Phoenix-D: When you talk about "absolutely obscene ship advantage", do you say that one side had lot more ships than the other?

IMHO the technology and number of ships are very important, but are not the only.

For example, I was in a battle when my opponent had ships with PPB IV, a large number of ships (100 BC), best shields and engines but similar Sensor and ECM than me.
In the other side, I had 20 LC ships with DUC. Well, my fleet did a carnage without loses...
Why? My ships had Stealth Armor III, Scattered Armor III, 20% trained fleet, 20% trained ships (most of them), Berzerker as culture, Aggressivenes 20% and Defensiveness 20%.
In the other side, my opponent had Aggressivenes "Weak" and Defensiveness "Pathetic", his culture was "Scientists" and his ships had not training.

The trick was that his 100 ships where unable to hit my ships, simple like that.

Then, I think that if your ships can't hit your enemy ships, then, you're in problems and probably you did a bad *.emp file...
Sure, you could try with fighters, seekers, boarding ships, train fleets and ships and still keep a fight... but you will be forced to play with a big disadvantage during all the game.