Beginner Question about Tactical Battle

[spacefan]

I'm relatively new at space empires 4, and never played space empires 3, only a lot of 2, so I am getting used to it gradually. Anyway, I'm in this middle of this game in a small galaxy with lots of empires, because I want lots of wars.

4-5 turns into the game, I have DUC 2 and Frigate and 1 ship comes through into my system, and decides not to accept a peace treaty.

So I build a Frigate with the DUC 2 components, go into battle against this ship

He has a escort with DUC 1, and yet his weapons hit constantly and mine miss.

I tried this in several other battles against this empire, one of them was with DUC 4 against his DUC 1. There wasn't any combat support components yet.

So then I looked up his race, and he has impressive bonus to agressiveness and defensivness. (I'm at 100% in both of those, bonusses to Intel and Mining + Propulsion)

So my question is, how do you beat a empire that has an advantage in those two, especially when it gets larger, should I just use missiles? Or just overwhelm him with more ships and better ships. I miss about 66% of the time even at 1 square away from him. And he hits like 70-80% of the time.