Single Player AI Difficulty level help for a new user

i would suggest keep playing whether its normal or hard.  AI is somewhat random; sometimes they play well sometimes they are horrible.  You might find one game easy and other times hard.  Its good to play normal till you can beat Hard.  To simplify things, only use one opponent.  The more AI you have the more random factors there are.

Read up on combat mechanics in the stickies above in the main forum.  I think you're not sending the right ships for the job and it seems endless because you're not destroying them fast enough.  For exapmle, fleets of assault frigates will destroy light frigates fast but will be destroyed easily if facing a carrier fleet.

The main difference between normal and hard is that hard cheats.  They still have the same basic idiocy.

One of the AI's most notorious tendencies is to build lots of light frigates (cobalts, disciples, skirmishers).  These units require no research, but are destroyed very easily by long range frigates (javelis, illuminators, assailants).  If you can upgrade to those unit types at the start of the game, you can kill armies many times larger than your own.

Another stupidity of the AI is the fact that it picks capital ships at random.  This is extremely stupid, since for most factions there is an obvious best choice for first capital ship.  For Advent and Vasari, you just aren't playing seriously if you don't pick the mothership or evacuator.  Oh, sure, there are a couple non-standard strategies out there that use different capital ships, but for a balanced strategy these should always be your first choice.  For TEC, it's usually Akkan or Marza, although occasionally you see Sova or Kol.

Make sure that the Teams are set to LOCKED (diplomacy off) or the AI opponents will end up ganging up on you.

There is also the fact whether the Hard will go either be an economist - which is very easy, fortifer - medium, diapolmat - easy, and aggressor - hard, that will represent how hard or how many ships that they have and how many they hit with. So you think 1 AI on hard is hard eh, wait till you get 9 unfair aggressor on you, all on the same team...

diplomat isn't an AI settting. the 4th one is Researcher. 

aggressors aren't actually that challenging. they tend to build siege frigates very early and try to bomb undefended colonies. its easily countered with some hangar defenses. 

i find researchers to be the hardest. they'll run up the tech tree very quickly and start building heavy cruisers extremely early. 

economist is the easiest one in my opinion. the AI doesn't know how to run an economy at all. economists tend to build more trade ports but they still aren't very good at maximizing their output. 

Each AI has its various strengths and weaknesses.  Aggressors can actually build huge armadas quite early on, but they're all unupgraded siege frigates and light frigates.  If you survive their initial onslaught your capital ships will be such a high level that the enemy will pose no further threat.  An aggressor grossly mismanages its economy and nearly ignores research.  An aggressor AI is dangerous for about the first 30 minutes, and a contendor for the first hour.  After an hour, aggressors usually are so far behind economy and tech wise that they're powerless. 

Fortifiers suffer a similar problem in that they fill every tactical slot in their homeworld before they start to expand outward, a huge waste of cash. Unlike the aggressor, however, this does not mangle their economy long-run and if left alone long enough they can be a significant challenge.  The best way to beat a fortifier is to rush him.  His fleet will be very weak from all the money he's spent on those turrets, and so long as you fight outside of their range you can easily win.

Researchers are definitely the hardest.  The AI's biggest flaw (even on researcher setting!) is that it doesn't progress through the tech tree fast enough.  These guys actually bring out units soon enough to be effective, and their fleets will progress at a reasonable pace.  They're sensible about defense and fleet spending, build a reasonable economy, and are definitely the most balanced oponent you will face.

Occasionally, you may notice a particularly weak AI had lots of civic research, but no military research.  This is the economist.  Like all AI's, he cripples his economy by getting too much fleet research.  The complete opposite of the researcher, he largely ignores the military research tree causing his units to be laughably weak.  This makes the economist a very weak opponent.

actually im fairly certain that the AI fleet level is nearly hard coded to exactly match your own. the bigger problem is that the AI doesn't do what human players do, which is ramp up their economy before each fleet upgrade so they can continue production at an adequate level. the AI will end up with an economy that is 2 or 3 tiers behind the human players but still have the same fleet cap. if you let them alone for too long they'll fill up that fleet cap and become dangerous. if you keep pressure on you'll find that they cannot replace losses at an adequate pace. this is why AI's tend to lose steam in longer games unless you're really taking your sweet time. 

Nope; try playing a game without buying any fleet upgrades (you can easily survive just by picking a Marza and power-levelling it).  The AI will happily advance through the fleet upgrade levels regardless of the fact that you are not.  I often will stay at one fleet level upgrade against the AI throughout the early game, since it's easy to have higher level units than they have and crush them.

i believe you that eventually the AI will fleet up if left on its own. however, i often check the line graphs at the end of a map i've won and i've noticed that it is uncanny how the AI ups its fleet exactly the same time that i do in almost every instance. i'm pretty sure there's a rubber banding mechanic going on there to keep things on the level. 

Maybe I'm just a bit slower on the fleet upgrades than I should be against the AI, but I almost always have lower fleet research than the AI until the late game when my economy starts to really take off and their's is just left floundering.

There is a jump between normal and hard.  I find that hard generally needs more strategy than just throwing ships at the AI.  I can beat hard using Entrenchment but I often struggled on vanilla (probably due to game style).

Whatever you do, remember that 'unfair' is called that for a reason.  It was a product of the betas (top players wanted a real challenge), and the ai gets major in-game bonuses.

quick and shameless cheat.  Play the first 20 minutes with all the AI's on easy/normal.  Then, once you have a bit of a fleet, an okay economy, some depth, and some very heavily fortified chokepoints, save your game.  Exit and reload the game.  In the options screen, set the AI to the level that you really want it to be at like hard/unfair.  Now that you have a bit of a setup, have fun playing with one empire against the other. 

Also, figure out where the enemy fleets will be coming in. Seed it with mines, and place a starbase with fully upgraded weapons, armor, and hangers,(and if TEC, at least one level of self-destruct).  Watch their fleets run straight into your toughest defenses, and then be annihalated when the starbase blows up.  Support with flak frigates(starbases are weak against fighters), and Long-range LRM's.  See if you can get a couple of repair platforms in support.  Watch a small fleet destroy much bigger fleets

Anyone who's going to complain about me cheating, read the first sentence.