Rebellord

I agree it is prohibitively expensive, i am just not sure this is a bad thing. As is, I only upgrade ships with considerable experience, not all of a class. Unless of course, I have an immediate emergency need. I suspect this is what the designers intended, and if so, it appears to be working. Maybe the AI should get an upgrade discount at the high end difficulties? As is, I tend to trash AI fleets already, if my fleets where already state of the

Well, my balanced / defensive heavy fleets always trash the AI offense only fleets. If a ship survives, it gains xp, and eventually hps. a 40 hp each frigate fleet can be quite a monster. Once my offense only fleets were getting slaughtered by the drengen high hp (I guess they were war party) fleets. Once I added decent defense they started surviving, and the tide of battle turned.

There is a reason the aliens are always broke. Of course the minors are capital happy and they always seem to have plenty of money, I guess they are heavy on the social development side of things.