Strategic help

[DirectorTsaarx]

You can also try fiddling with the "Can Break Formation" toggle. Certain ships will break formation and follow their own strategy.

You can also change targeting priorities so the ships will go for the bases first...

In all, strategic combat is tricky. Basically, the same code that controls AI ships in combat is controlling your ships. So AI combat improvements should improve the utility of strategic combat. But we humans can also tweak the system by allowing ships to break formations, switch around targeting priorities, etc.

Good luck!