Allready during my first boarding attempts i noticed that the number of enemy defenders seems to raise together with number of my cremember but i didn't payed attention to the correct numbers.

No i own my first battleship and thinks are going crazy..i will describe just my last boarding attempt.

I am flying a marauder, together with the boarding shuttles 120 Crewmembers are allowed and i have
35 Crewmember 15 Officers 70 Marines and 1 Droid...my goal is to gather more battledroids.
I attacked a stonewall that has no boarding shuttles and the scannerinfo said he has
40 Crewman 63 Marines and 7 Droids...full 110 max. Crewmembers.

During the loong battle i hit him 4 times with Nuclear Mines before i send my boarding party and the scannerinfo said he had 21 Crewman 47 Marines and 7 Droids left.

At the first section of the enemy ship there where
9 Crewman 16 Marines and 3 Droids defending the Ship

At the 2. Section i had
13 Crewman 23 marines and 3 Droids defending the Ship

At the 3. eection i had
17 Crewman 37 Marines and 5 Droids defending the Ship

At the Bridge i had
21 Crewman 47 Marines and 7 Droids defending the Ship

makes 60 Crewman, 123 Marines and 18 Droids...or better 201 of 110 max. Crewmembers^^

I tried a few other fights and it seemed similar that the KI uses more defender then max. Crewmembers.

What is your experience with Cruiser and Battleship boarding attempts (if boarding the same shipclass with max. crewmebers)..does anyone have a solution?

My boarding shuttle pilots are drunk and mostly don't even hit the airlock in order to start the boarding process.
But I was able to snatch a Marauder Battleship class while hitting it with 3 or 4 Nukes and boarding it later.
There were still plenty of defenders left, though strangely most of the droids where destroyed due to radiation.

Have you considered that you just pushed them back to next part of the ship, rather than killed them?
I don't know, but the developer has an account here maybe you can ask him directly via PM.

[spoiler]
In order to get more droids you can chat with a friendly governor regularly.
Sometimes he offers them to you for 10000 Galactical Cookies a piece.
I once even found them on a planet stroll for a ridiculously low price.
Buying them there can even give you even more crew than you are officially allowed to have.
Another thing I did was that I boarded random small/medium ships and retreated after I "EMP'ed" their 2 or 3 droids.
[/spoiler]

That's a great point. I've noticed that even in early boarding (with a corvette) the bridge has the maximum amount of crew even though I've already fought through at least half as many to get there. What's up with that?

Well...maybe it's thought like only pushing them back but it would be still a joke because it effectly doubles the number of defenders available.

There first Teams had to fight roughly 3/1 against them and i had a commandoteam..not 30% normal crewman and i had a few losses at the first two section, heavy losses at the 3. and i had to retreat at the bridge.

Spoiler:
I found the best way to aquire battledroids is to attack large frighters and treasure ships because the have a low numer of defender but a high chance of having battle Droids as cargo.

Yeah I have seen the same thing in my game. Max crew members no matter what I do if I have max crew. In the 3rd game it was very easy to get an higher level ship early in the game but with this one it is a nightmare. I am hoping its just a bug and not a new thing.

I am going to check this out.

Also, how do I not lose battle droids? The manual says the attack option keeps the droids back, but I frequently lose 2 or 3 droids doing an attack...should I be using a commando attack instead? Though that says it uses marines AND droids.

Even if you're the attacker and should be able deccide wich of your cremember you send in...the different attackmodes only let you decide wich kind of Crewmember attacks in front...so..you can always loose Droids during a normal attack or crewmen and officers during a commando-strike, only the chances that they die are a bit lower.

Clearly boarding could use a rework of several of it's parts.


By the Way, i conquered my first battleship without droids, made gathering them to my goal later..only to find out that i don't need them anymore ;)

I checked it and the amount of enemy crew members you encounter during boarding is not limited to the amount of crew on the ship, HOWEVER it´s still proportional to the actual amount. This means that it makes the game more difficult, but does not make game strategies like nuclear mines useless. Of course this is not supposed to stay this way. I have fixed it this morning and it will be in the next update. Until then crew combat is a bit more difficult, but not unbeatable. Nuclear mines still help.