On the whole "a little disadvantage" thing...one thing that all naval officers learned somewhere near the turn of the century was that a little disadvantage turned into a big loss, it is one of the reasons I think there was so few naval engagements in WW2 for example and just thinking on it why carriers were so big a change, because you can't avoid a fight when carriers are present. Anyway, as the saying goes...as an exercise to the reader to illustrate this: take two sides; A had 3 ships, B has 4 ships, each ship takes 4 damage to kill, each ship does 1 hit damage. Line them up so each ship of A is engaged by 1 of B except ship 3 which has 2 attackers. See what happens, feel free to change how the ships fight but it doesn't change the fact that A is destroyed for far less cost to B then 3:4 odd would intuitively indicate.
Marshal Kosygin and I had this revelation simultaneously during his first, and last, battle <G>. The parallels with surface naval battles aren't exact, though. As I understand it, in the typical naval surface battle, a ship being fired at performs measurably worse than a ship that is not being targeted. Thus, most fleets would train to spread their fire across the entire enemy battle line to ensure that all enemy ships were engaged. Additionally, even later in WW II, at the height of surface engagement tech, capital ships had difficultly distinguishing their shell-fall from the salvoes of other capital ships, if they all aimed at the same target, which made it very difficult to adjust their fire, and thus they tended to target different ships to maximize their chances of hits.
In Starfire, there is no disadvantage associated with concentrating your fire, and thus, the advantage of knocking an enemy ship out of the fight quickly becomes the overriding factor.
However, none of that invalidates your point, which was that a small numerical or mass advantage can quickly translate to a significant advantage in battle, which is both true and something the Russians learned at great cost.
Probably the hardest thing I had to learn in starfire battles is that they are naval and not land engagements and the above applies. Getting caught by a substantially larger force in one Bug-Seal battle was particularly painful as I had thought from the pre-battle banter I had a good chance of victory and then what showed up...I'm pretty sure Starslayer detected my discontent! A lot of our recent battles have been to be blunt "inconclusive" simply because neither side felt they had an advantage big enough to tip the scales in their favour sufficiently to avoid major losses even in a victory.
Starfire also adds in the technology dimension. Higher tech, or at least the possession of critical "break-point" systems, such as fighters, or capital missile launchers, can make a big difference and overcome numerical or mass disadvantages. In this case, though, the tech advantage isn't clear. Both sides are roughly the same, with the D'Bringi and the soviets roughly equivalent, and the Rehorish generally behind both. The Soviets are slightly ahead of the D'Bringi, but the D'Bringi have access to some "wild-card" tech.
Kurt
