This thread made me want to replay so I started an horatio game. I planned to read all the main faction quests and take my time but I have no idea where the second pirate fleet I had to kill went so I never progressed past the very first quest. Very cringe how story-spawned enemy fleet go explore the galaxy instead of trying to attack you.

ES2 has so many cool interactions for combat that would be fun to exploit against competent opponents but the AI sucks so much at waging war. I declared war on sophons and after they nuked some of my scout ships I never saw a single fleet that was bigger than 1 ship. Strolled right to their capital unopposed. Before dying they allied with the unfallen who got dragged into the war, I again strolled in their territory basically unopposed and sieged my way to their capital.
While I was doing this they sent 3 different fleets to one of my system, they arrived 1 turn after each other so after every battle I had time to repair my garrison fleet as well as quickbuying a couple of reinforcement ships just in case.
Cherry on top: They had a 25k strength military behemoth but it was sieging a pirate system far form their territory and close to mine, it had to slowly go back to their capital and then it went down in a single battle doing 0 damage because all my ships had a jammer weapon. I allied with zelevas to get a supremacy victory because the campaign was over anyway.
I wish the AI was smart enough to put you in a situation where you need to use special nodes to gain an advantage but you genuinely can win the game by spamming medium ships with slugs and nothing else. Granted this was only on hard (I had forgotten how easy this game is) but more income doesn't change how suicidal the AI is. Next time I feel like playing I'll disable pirates since they confuse the AI so much and see if I can win an higher difficulty game as cravers.