[quote=Monkeypants]
" I offer some of the most powerful warriors the universe has ever seen and a fleet to match it.".[b]This is national pride, not necessarily the truth. just making that clear.[/b]
[/quote]

That is a lie. A Draconian fleet with the same units as any of topmost 3 empires of all could still wipe them out, albeit with losses. The Draconian footsoldiers are unmatched in hand-to-hand combat [except against Supremes, since they kinda taught them everything, and trained against them], and Supremes have very, very powerful personnel weapons that you do not want to see used, both anti-tank, anti-personnel, and anti-bunker, even though they aren't the most courageous. Plus Supreme ships are massive, and powerful, and there's even that other Supreme spinner ship that's just sitting around at a central-ish point, snagging everyones' communications and sitting around like a bunch of restless fat tech guys.

And rape mode usually comes into play when one side has a better advantage. For example, if you sit behind your shields, relying on them to protect you, and you just fire and fire straight at the enemy fleet, then sure, you'll get disadvantaged. Other ships may be narrower, with powerful forward weapons, and so while you will have much more trouble hitting them, they'll be firing superslugs into your shields, and maybe even past them. Other ships may have really powerful broadside shields, with all their weaponry on two sides, so once they get broadside, you'll be bombarded too much to fire back.

If you have shields AND weapons AND thrusters engaged, then you'll be average, at best, in all of them. You'll not be moving at max efficiency, you'll not be firing at max power, and you'll not be protected at max protection.

However, if you were to have, say, a Battleship that has reactors specifically for its' energy and kinetic weapons, and uses other ships to provide shielding and others, similar to a gas tanker, to lend power to them, then they can keep moving behind a safety wall.

Or, even better, you can simply start investing in stealth tech, or disruption tech, and make it so that you won't even have to put up shields. Or, oh my god, you can invest in weapons predicting tech to throw up shields where it's needed to stop a round, instead of always having a shield up.

The Supremes are arrogant; they have big enough ships with plenty of power so that their shields are on an entirely new level. You'd have to board them [Slow moving objects such as a shuttle isn't blocked, though fighters require a control officer to open up a hole in the shield, and Corvettes are automatically admitted through the shield by merging their own with the big ships']