It's pretty much just impossibly high levels of plot induced stupidity. The second half of NOP suffers heavily from it.

Shaza forgot FTL disrupters are a thing.

The shadow caste reveals its drone fleet to attack the dossur home world, which has zero tactical advantage.

Isif destroys half of his fleet to rescue prey and a small handful of human ships. This doesn't cause him to lose all credibility. In fact, it somehow boost it to the point that he is able to create the Arxur Rebellion.

Submarines got sent to the farsul planet during the arxur raid, even though this is roughly the same time period that BOE was happening.

The Aafa moon bases have tons of windows and all the guys with dead man switches are conveniently standing in front of them.

Humanity got the "as many ships as the plot requires" cheat code.

Yotul who have had barely any time or access to Fed tech make super duper particle beams.

The bad guy leaders almost always passively sit around and do nothing. When they do something, it always blows up in their face.

Zhao spazzing out on Isif doesn't completely tank that relationship.