CenturionJixra,
I appreciate the perspective and may try multiplayer. I'm afraid, though, as good as I feel I am at this game, I will be humbled by the online players. At least now, the utopia I create for my "underlings" will last, until I play that gifted ten year old that sets my humility back to the proverbial square one...
You probably will get thumped at the beginning, but that's just the way that online multiplayer works for any game. I remember the first time I ever played online multiplayer, which was for the original Unreal Tournament (1999), the greatest online multiplayer first person shooter of all time. I had been used to using arrow keys for movement and never used the mouse at all and of course, I could barely move relative to the experienced players and couldn't kill anyone. But I stuck with it and enjoyed the kills I was getting and now I can hold my own against all but the most elite players in the game.
So, you just have to stick with it and find enjoyment in lesser accomplishments. Are you seeing yourself improve over time? Do you feel that you are becoming tougher and learning the game? In team games, is it taking longer for the opposition to take you down? Are you learning to be a larger and larger pain-in-the-ass, helping your team as you go down? Are you enjoying the challenge of trying to reverse-engineer your strategy by watching replays of good players? (Highly recommended.) I guess that to an extent you have to lower your goal from winning or beating another player to having a more humble expectation--to trying to become troublesome. It really is quite a challenge.
You know, having played hundreds of games online, I've been in several situations where I started out sandwiched between four opponents (two on either side) or on a star system with three opponents and no allies (large random multistar) and I have learned to deal with it. Today I actually enjoy the challenge of that situation. I know that I'm probably going to lose my starting home terran, but I figure out ways to stay in the game and help my team. (There isn't any law that says that your fleet has to fight to the death against the enemy fleet, dying for nothing, as opposed to going on the run and conducting guerilla warfare to help your team.) I think a great many players don't know to do that because when you play single player, if you get beaten up you just quit and start a new game, whereas in the team game you need to try to help your team because if your team wins you win even though you may have personally been beaten up. (Another example of how single player and online multiplayer are different games.)
Anyway, try to look at it from that perspective. Your goal isn't necessarily to win the game single-handedly and to be the big hero nor even to knock out another player, but rather to do as best you can and to help your team as much as you can. So, I think that new players really need to lower their expectations for what they alone can accomplish and that by doing that, they'll enjoy the online game more. Instead of demanding of yourself that you beat another player or win the game for your team, instead try to do what you can to help your team, which might include beating another player, refusing to die quickly when faced with a 2-on-1 situation, and/or being a huge pain in the ass even though you've been beaten. Over time, if you stick with it and try to learn more about the game and to improve, you'll become a tougher player. Eventually you'll be the one beating up on the newer players and average players and holding your own against the good players. Imagine how good that would feel. It's quite an achievement.
