Japool wrote:...each successive fleet takes more and more production just to have.
Replace "fleet" with "ship" and this already happens, in that most hulls have an increasing cost to produce dependent on the number of ships an empire owns.
The limiter I suggest is not increasing cost to make a new ship but rather reducing the available industry based off the number of ships.
Though what you have sounds like a decent start to me.
Japool wrote:...rather reducing the available industry based off the number of ships.
There are various threads around discussing this. I'm not particularly fond of it because industry is a location-specific number, so ships would have to draw it from somewhere. Some consider that a good thing because it gives isolated colonies a way to use up their otherwise wasted PP, but I don't link the likely semi-arbitrary way this would be administered, and it makes things a bit more complicated to understand for players.
Understood, I will go digging and read up on the discussions. Some games do it well, some bad, but as you say, with the disconnected industry it would be an "interesting" interaction between supply lines, industry and this new upkeep.
The thread Geoff is describing has been idle for 4 months with no real resolution or decision on if or how to implement some form of upkeep. I would think the discussion would be best continued on the link below.