[Taqwus]

One reason why, versus people, I'd probably use smaller, more numerous, cheaper ships than I use against the AI (I tend to go in for few-but-expensive-and-powerful otherwise) -- the anti-ship intel ops only affect one ship at a time. The AI doesn't make good use of them (as noted to Malfador, I've *never* lost a ship to CI, or a planet to PPP for that matter, even on Hard, which is very strange considering that I've seen many other ops at least once).

You're in a lot, LOT bigger trouble if you're defending your border with just a handful of powerful ships per system, and some get subverted, than if the same number of smaller ships gets subverted from a horde.

But for more balancing -- ISTR that somebody reported that the engines-per-move setting was finally working. So you might want to try boosting this -- e.g. a DN, which currently can take 4 engines, now takes up to 16, but requires 4 (or maybe more!) engines per move; same top speed, but far more space required.

They should theoretically also require larger or more powerful shield generators (field needs to be larger), and heavier armor for the same effective degree of protection (again, much more surface area), but we may not be able to do that yet.


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night