pls help. dread lord too powerfull

don't try to beat them with bigger ships, build small ships, because of the mechanism the combatsystem works the dread loards can only destroy one ship per shot, so all other of your ships can fire back. also the transporters are defenceless, they can be destroyed by fast one-laser-scouts.

Sorry i cant help. Tried to connect. The game apparantly only singleplayer

i cant beat them, even on easy, i dont know how to combat a scout with 30 blody cannon, my tactic is just quic colinisation away from their home world, and pour everythign into research. i build one or two fast ships to take out the occasional transport and sell my techs to all the other alliied players. Let them deal with the problem.

Doesnt work after a certain no of missions though

Let's take a fleet of tiny fighters each dealing 2 damage.
you attack, so you make 10+9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1 = 55 damage if all your ships would be destroyed.
The addition comes because every turn the dreads are killing one of your ships. I took 1 damge instead of 2, because sometimes you deal 2 and sometimes 0 in the middle you should make more then 1, so calculating with 1 damage will be certain.
As you see you make about 55 damage until all your ships are gone, all dreadlords I saw had below 50 hulls. Tiny ships are cheap and they are produced fast, when equipped with more guns you'll need less ships.

I'd agree with WarEagle, the tiny ships work. Research to tiny ships, with 2 beam and 2 warp engines as quickly as possible and group them in to the biggest fleets you can (logistics techs help ALOT here). Also dont wait for things to build, you have lots of money, use it!!! I bought a basic lab on all three worlds in the first turn and set research to 100% and get moving up that tree.
There are far more thorough stratgy guides on these forums for this mission, search under Dread Lords or Siege I believe the mission is called.

In that particular mission, you might be better off avoiding fighting the DL altogether. First, send colony ships to get what planets you can- your priority is to get one as close to the Drengin world as possible. Then, research Planetary Invasion (100% to research). Then quickly build up a fleet of high speed, long range fighters and transports. Zoom into Drengin space and take the planet before the DLs have really got themselves going. You don't even have to fight the Drengin ships (make sure you're fast enough to avoid them- all you've got to do is take out the ones orbiting the planet).

That said, you can't get away with that later on in the campaign. In those cases, tiny fighters are one possible tactic. Another important thing is to make sure you get first strike, sometimes you can destroy the enemy before they get a shot off. Military starbases can also really turn it around. Also, taking DL planets can give you some very, very good tech.

I just answered a similar question earlier today. Not the most original ideas of how to fight them, but effective nonetheless:
Link

well one of the things about the campaign is that you can lose a mission you won't get a gameover screen. You can simply play an alt mission.