@Messenth Well neither of them is ideal, you probably advanced Lt Commander Sir Justerr Yourner on merit though. He was likely the corvettes XO, his records showed that he was absolutely superb as XO, keeping the ship running, managing the crew, large scale planning etc. Also a skilled and brave combatant in boarding actions... But it turns out he does not really know how to fight a ship very well.
Lt Commander Patra Greson is more miserable but keep in mind that Tactics 9 is about average for that rank, it was likely a seniority thing.
Also the cruiser raid was going ahead regardless of what you had chosen, well, if you had raided the NASP then it might have been called off. This did actually put you in a good position to counter it. You just had very very few ships actually active this 'turn'.
@uju32 The Tohil was I think 1 durability away from being completely destroyed. She was not prioritized for refit and was in fact partially dissembled to help with reverse engineering. She is still being put back together in the shipyards over Ilam.
@Satar @Korporati No recruiting of suicide ships. Valinor only does it because they have five planets full of religious fanatics and are faced with an atheist foe a hundred times their size. Note that anyone good enough to serve on a military starship can be paid enough to get their family out of debt bondage if they put a full career in. Or rather faster if they serve on one of your ships and get rich on prize money.
Also damage rollover is very much a combat calculator thing.
Additionally War Bishop Honorius with Prowess 15 is indeed a deeply scary individual! The Valinor Regency practice almost Dune type mental conditioning and training, though without the benefit of actual Space Magic. He probably had inferior cybernetic augmentation to Strauss or other commoner Imperial officers but is some kind of absurdly capable religious fanatic meditative sword master who, in raw skill, blows Ranca out of the water.
Edit: Also the combined Valinor Regency probably has an economy a little bigger than Chuang Mu's but several times the military spending. They have somewhere in the region of 10-20 medium cruisers and dozens of corvettes. They lack the ability to build capital ships.
Gamble is the order of the day. 
