Speed Limits

I don't think you can. The only thing you could possibly do is take out the transports before they leave orbit.

But, I have never seen the AI equip their ships with that much speed.
I have seen war ships with 30-35 speed, though, so it is not out of the realm of possibility.

The game does get a bit goofy when you get speeds like that. There's practically no way for the suprise attack to be defended against. You can literally swoop in and wipe someone out in a single turn getting all the matchups that you want.

I'm not sure what could be done. Perhaps a diminishing returns policy should go into ships. IE the first engine works full, the second at 80%, etc.

The main problem with that is you can end up forcing all ships to be basically the same. It is something that I believe should be addressed especially since the AI doens't abuse speed the way humans do...

I've managed troop transports with 70 for speed before. They can't take a hit, but they're going so fast they don't have to.

There might be a way... If you can eliminate the higher engines entirely.

Or make the engines MUCH more expensive (I believe Hyperwarp only costs 10 BC or so - you can pile them onto cargo holds for extremely fast and cheap ships).

At higher speeds just remember that the AI can't coordinate as well as you, so it really a flsesh and blood player advantage. It helps agains the AI bonuses at suicidal level.

But as a practical manor, it really helps speed up the game mechanics on large galaxy sizes. Because of other stuff you want to cram on warships, and the limited number of engines you can place on tiny or small hulls, effective warships and balanced fleets can't have insane speeds.

But constructors and transports and freighters can. By the time you can get insane speed, it helps the game mechanics to have packs of those secondary vessels moving quickly around.

generally the AI is not smart enough to take advantage and if they are a small defensive ship will hold off a naked invading transport.

Speed Kills

For me I wish there was engine techs above Hyperwarp III to research even at 50 parsec a turn it takes forever to cross a gigantic galaxy.

Once I have Hyperwarp III and depending on what Weapons/Defenses I have my ships speed by class are:

Transport Cargo Hull - two advanced troop module 47 - 50 pc
Transport Small Hull - one advanced troop module 25 pc (fleet 15 together with a class 5 phaser or better and they will not only reach the target but clear it off for invasion.)

Medium Hull - with weapons/defence 25 - 29 pc

Large Hull - I use for transport killers/raiders/scouting etc. 1 weapon lots of defense and LS 45 - 50 pc

Huge Hull - mostly weapons/minimum defense 30 pc

Agree mostly with Kosty. However you can get Battleships rolling once you get enough of the military resources locked down. Because you get such huge bonuses, you really don't need to carry too too much weapons and defense. This allows you to build faster and cheaper battleships that still completely dominate the enemy.

Again agree that on huge and up you really do need speeds of around 30 to make the game move along. There just seems to be something wrong with moving 3-4x your sensor range tho. It makes defence impossible.

Another idea i've had is to make autopilot be special. IE if you autopilot somewhere you get 100% efficency, and if you go one square at a time, you suffer some penalty. This would allow you to zoom accross the galaxy, but stop you from wiping out 10 fleets in a single turn. (after autoing, your next move would need at least +1 move)

I got the need for speed

You could make transport/constructor/freighter modules require much more room, perhaps with a large sizemod so that even after miniaturization there's still not much room for more than 3 or 4 engines. You'd need to balance it though so that your first transports and such aren't toooo slugish or the early wars will drag by forever.

Size 4, sizemod 35 for a troop module might work.