One of my biggest points of frustration with this game is how, after AI players come into serious money, they crank out hundreds and hundreds of ships, literally spamming the galaxy with them. It makes wars a pain, it makes keeping track of everything a chore, and it makes the map a cluttered and "unrealistic" mess.

I understand that this isn't a problem for most players, but I enjoy some role playing in my games. In particular, I prefer a Star Trek-style universe (often using the ST mod), where individual ships are highly prized and not disposable, and where fleet sizes are fairly small.

Is there any relatively easy and painless way to mod the game, such that total military sizes and numbers of ships held by any given player will be sharply reduced? I'd love if each side had, at most, maybe 100 ships on the map at any given time -- with a strong preference for larger, capital-sized ships. Ideally, there would be an emphasis on individual ship-to-ship combat, and less emphasis on massive-fleet-vs-massive-fleet spam.

Also, is there a non-economic way to make this happen? It seems that making ship components more expensive, and/or crippling everyone's economic bonuses, would force stinginess on everyone's part. But that's not really what I have in mind. Also, in my very long and drawn out games (I like to RP, as I said), eventually each side ends up with piles of free cash and would get around any economic limits I tried to impose.

Thanks in advance for the help.