Do not underestimate.......the power of 3 ion cannons. I too found the Rebel campaign ridiculous once the Empire starts attacking in earnest. However, the solution is actually pretty simple: - make sure you have as few border planets as possible. For each one, build 3 ion cannons. Yes. 3. With 3 ions, you will be able to fire roughly every 20-30 seconds. This will stop nearly any Imperial Fleet, period. - backing up those defensive ion cannons, all you need is corvettes and Assault frigates. Forget fighters, forget nebulons. MAYBE keep some y-wings in reserve. - Your assault fleet can actually be pretty simple. 6-8 assault frigates, 6-10 corvettes and 4-6 marauders. It's large-ish, but you really only need one of these. Pour all the rest of your pop cap into giant defensive fleets babysitting the ion cannon border worlds. The key to the assault fleets is the Marauders. If it's visible on the map, they can hit it. You setup your frigates and corvettes as pure defense and you veeeeery slowly creep forward until you can see the space station. From then on, the marauders can just chip away eternally. As long as you're not engaging a monster defensive fleet, your frigates should be able to handle any incoming hostiles. *spoiler below* The triple ion cannon thing is so nasty that I think I was actually able to beat a mission I was intended to lose. When they send that monster fleet against Alderaan with the DS, I actually -won- the battle. Final Imperial losses were like 6 ISDs, 15-20 victories, and uncountable smaller ships. The ions were able to keep them massively suppressed. So even though it was dicey for awhile, I ended up winning the battle with only maybe 50% fleet losses. Of course, the DS then proceeded to toast Alderaan, but that's a different story