Routinely outnumbered, even with more or equal ships

[vonwike1]

I've noticed, I rarely outnumber my foe, even if I have more or equal ships in theatre. In contrast, the foe outnumbers me more often than not, or has equal numbers. I understand, this is to simulate change encounters and you can't always have your best and biggest and most ships during these encounters. Interested to see how this is weighted. I don't have the checkmark to buff the AI selected at startup.

Battle just started 12 enemy ships (not including destroyers) to my 4. I have more ships in theatre.

Thank you for insights!

[Kriegsspieler]

In my experience, it is not rare to have inferior numbers in any given battle scenario. However, depending on the type of battle it might not matter, if for example you are playing convoy defense or convoy attack. In other cases, you can have superior numbers deployed, but then watch as the enemy runs away. Overall, then, I do think the number of ships in a set of battles does represent reasonably well the balance of forces, with a high degree of variability dictating which ships actually show up.

Over the long run, superior numbers in a theater do begin to count, forcing the enemy to decline combat. When the numbers are against the AI, whenever possible it prefers to avoid the battle entirely, rather than lose a bunch of ships.