Compare these, when i upgrade i loose???

[Mawgwa]

I have this ship named vulcan1 that i built in a hurry and its my best ship (don't laugh)
when i tried to improve it cost effective and more shields-n-comps i began looseing ships??
these ships last 99% of the time and the upgrades get detroyed faster than @#$%^&
take a look and please give me some insight? the Vulcan bird of prey is the upgrade as you can see.

             Vulcan1                                      Vulcan Bird of Prey
Hull:   30250 cost:4991250                          35850  cost:5915250

PC     15000wt 5993500eg                           17590wt 7030721eg
         cost1000                                          cost 1

spcl   5250wt 1993500er DB10%                 5250wt  1994166er DB10%
         Def 5250   750000HP                         Def 5325   752500HP
           cost 1000                                        cost 2

weap  4000wt 2100000er acu22%              4000wt 2135499er  acu22%
         1050000att   cost 106500                1050000att cost 3

 X2                                                                 X3
comp  1500wt 350000er acu 12%               1500wt  363333er acu12%
          DB 10% cost 40000                         DB 10% cost 1

 X2                                                                 X3
shld   1500wt 27%abs  600000er                1500wt 27%abs  603566er
           cost 10700                                      cost 2

 I just cant figure why im looseing the bird of prey's over the Vulcan1's it seems to me the bird of prey is better ship? i get 40acu 41 abs on vulcan1 and 42acu 45 abs on the bird of prey's? and have better def and hp's ???? please help me before i bang my head on the wall?? heh

[thezerg]

superships don't need def. just throwing that out there. also shields=8w special=6w weapon=5w and comp=9w

The only thing that i can think of is the upgrade has more power so the missions that you are doing are harder.

[Lammalord]

ahh make it easier zerg, just make all the weighs an even 8.. thats what i do

[thezerg]

I guess i'm just not as cool as you 

[ars68]

a little side note here, was this before or after the missions were changed to have same reward depending on commander level?

if it was after, then no, more power should technically not help or hinder it, because the reward (and thus the difficulty, or at least it better ) will be the same. 

either way, ya, you will more then likely do better once you change all your weights to 8 or so, and transfer all that weight into the powercore, then use the extra power to further enhance your ship's systems.

[Gunfighter Frank]

and another note could it be that your power was increasing.  I have found as your power increases ships that do just fine at one power dont prefrom as well at higher power levels without looses.  I would suggest going with the cheaper design for the simple fact that when you loose them they dont cost as much to replace. But you should go ahead and build a completely new ship as your power grows.