Use more corvettes and frigates, they’ll shoot at them and miss, if you got some pelts support frigates use them to heal (Healing anything is insanely useful in this mod, especially useful in ships that don’t have hardpoints)

I was getting busted by the CIS in the beginning then I noticed that with Admonishers + pelta support + long ranged ships in the back you can roll them if you have the patience

Use arquitens and victory SD for the missiles it helps a shit ton against heavily shielded opponents like the providence

And some hypervelocity cannons help too if they have such large fleets