I need help to win battles because people with barely any weapons still do more damage to me even if they don't have anything in their weapons slot

rank: 181
weapons: 8 light null rays
2 dominion cannons
1 dominion cannon mk 3
defense 4 energy nullifiers mk 2
2 dark ring thrusters

attack: 3204
defense: 2003

If they have fewer weapons than you then they could have a higher Tactical Officer count than you. What are you putting rank points into, cause I would suggest putting rank points into Tactical Officers.

They probably have a lower damagecap/higher defense why don't you take a pic of everything on your ship tab

Having that many null rays installed at your rank means you probably dumped a lot of your rank points into decks and are probably in a research legion. Going on that assumption, other ships likely have fewer decks than you (damage is calculated by atk vs def * decks someone can post the full formula, but basically if two ships with 1k atk and 1k def were to attack each other the one with more decks will take more damage) and if they are in an artifact legion, they get more android helmsmen and rescued prisoners to increase their stats with no deck needed.

Suggestions: 1. Stop putting rank points into decks (they have limited gains once you have installed most of what you want and eventually you will have more shipbots than you could ever want) 2. Join a legion with artifact base payouts (Your researched nods can easily outpace your ability to pay for upkeep, the usefulness is limited just like decks, an arti base will lead to higher research through android scientists, and an average base shipment gives 2 rescued prisoners which means half an upgrade of a gun a day meaning you get the benefit of going from a full set of nulls to thetas in a few months for free and no deckspace) 3. Don't use the lower ranked versions of a mod, only the "heavy" version because it will wind up costing you a lot of money to upgrade every time for very little benefit.