Well, certainly Chris had some bad luck (earlier in the game, when it has the chance to snowball) and failed some rolls to kill that were more likely than not to go his way. In this game however, it actually lost the dogfight to the rebel squadrons: That’s an extremely solid fighter block, with nothing a dedicated bomber and gaining additional benefits from Admiral Sloane, it’s a squadron complement that has the potential to blow out the enemy Combat Air Patrol (CAP) and then spend the rest of the game providing effective harassment against capital ships.
Lets have a look at the Imperial Squadron complement:
This game is a pretty good demonstration of one of the cardinal errors you can make in Armada: overreaching with your squadrons.