Well, yes, a flack/shield kol has much more play room as far as antimatter goes.... but maintaining adaptive force shield requires 60 AM/40 seconds... or 1.5 antimatter/second or the exact same antimatter cost as powersurge.

antimatter regeneration for both the Kortul and KOL is .75+.08*(level-1)  In other words... at lv10, the base regen still cant quite maintain these abilities... that said, due to the slight lag time in ability activation and autocast imperfection, for all intensive purpuses, it can.  (1.47 vs 1.5)

That means that perfectkol in perfect land (without starbase) has 2.6 antimatter/second to spare... or 1 flack burst every 38.5 seconds.  Plenty of time for a skirantra (.85+.09*(level-1) am/second  to spend 80 antimatter and more than completely repair any damaged strikecraft.  lv 10 = 1 heal every 37.1 seconds.  (more base regen, but no culture bonus, or last stand bonus)

Vasari bombers have 140 base hp, and .5! regen/second, and 5 armor.

A flack burst will do 48 damage to a unupgraded vasari bomber.  Since regen is 1/2ed when under attack, and 8 seconds between flack bursts, the bomber will regain 2 HP... 3 flack bursts wont kill an unupgraded vasari bomber. It takes 4.5 flack bursts to kill a fully upgraded vas bomber.

So, a kol gotta spend 400 antimatter to almost kill a vasari bomber... and it takes a skirantra 80 antimatter to almost overheal that bomber by a factor of 2.

Lv 10 kol has 486 Antimatter.

lv 10 skiranka has 617.5 Antimatter.

(both including antimatter upgrades)

w/e... I am supposed to not be commenting on balance before the patch comes out... oops.

the update is so new that when i checked i was the only one shown

This ability is only activated when under focus fire, so again it's not something you will necessarily maintain at all times.  If the Kol is under serious fire, you are probably retreating it so long-term is not a big deal, and if it's not under serious fire you won't activate much, if at all.

In practice, the Kol will burst several times near the start of the battle in quick succession (blowing through its antimatter reserves, which are much larger at higher levels).  This, along with garda presence, will greatly thin out the enemy strike craft.  At this point, replacements will be killed off by flaks and fighters as they are created, so they shouldn't build up nearly as quickly.  The need for quick-succession bursts disappears if the ability does its job right.

It is out now. Go download it.

Click on the blue tab in the upper left hand corner of impulse, then check the box that says "show pre-release version"

That could be part of the problem; your capital ship to frigate ratio is way off.  Eight capital ships is more than you'd ever want for TEC or Vasari (Advent can go that high only after researching mass transcendance).  Presuming typical units (ie, not huge units like carriers or heavies) I'd probably only want 1 or 2 capitals with a fleet that small.

The strategy you describe works quite well in the early-game.  The toughness of capital ships means your opponent has very little opportunity to deal lasting damage to you.  I run cap-heavy openers all the time, but they are simply not viable beyond 4 capital ships.  Any further and you're sacrificing so much firepower that your fleet simply won't be able to stand up to a credible threat.  I strongly suspect that the "power" you're feeling isn't the capital ships, but rather economics; you probably have a lot more money sunk in your fleet than the AI has in its.  This is fairly typical of hard difficulty and below; they get their economy rolling slowly, spend money on pointless things, and fall behind relatively early.  So it's not surprising you can make ends meet with a capital ship armada and enjoy the benefit of not having to worry about replacing frigates.  Against serious threats like the pirates, it's not going to cut it.

If you reconfigured to be frigate-based, you could easily double your damage output, and that's going to allow you to fight fleets far stronger than what your capital ship armada could deal with.  But the benefits don't end there; by having fewer capital ships, your experience isn't spread as thin, and your remaining capital ships will reach higher levels.  This may actually give you better support abilities than if you'd had more capital ships.  As well, with more fleet spent on combat frigates, you can lean a little more heavily on defensive support cruisers.  The right abilities here can greatly extend the longevity of your fleet.

Don't take this the wrong way, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with your playstyle.  If you're having fun, power to you.  However, your fleet will be stronger if you reconfigure with more frigates, and if your goal is to match up to the more powerful diplomacy pirates, then you may need to adopt that strength.