Hence why I ended my last post with "with dread" meaning I'm not looking forward to it, but unlike you I have no idea what is to come, although I do have some guesses, my imagination is my first encounter with those viral matrix>tractor beam>4 high yeild torp spamming romulan warbirds only 10 times worse.
Ah, I misread it! Thought it said "with the dread". My bad.
And no, with those elachi it's a lot worse. Everything. I repeat everything spams holds, disables and the like. They don't have that much hull wise, but they have this power called "elusive target" which seems to pop up for 5 secs every 10 secs and buffs their defense stat to the point where you might just hit them once every 30 shots fired.
On the ground they have a similar power called "shield hardening" which essentially nerfs incoming damage down to what seems to be 20% or so (very rough guess based on my observations).
In space, one on one with the elachi isn't too bad. It's when you have to get involved in large fleet actions (which happens a few times in the story) that it gets bad.
Truth be told, I absolutely loved the story until I hit the elachi arc. After I ground that out, I just lost interest.
Prepatch for LOR is up btw. Should kick in after you leave the game.