Actually large groups of smaller ships are very realistic. They are harder to hit and distribute the firepower more equally. If you lose some of them the impact is less noticable than losing one out of two capships. Large groups of just one shiptype on the other hand tend to have many openings, like being glass cannons (LRMs) or losing their only weapons easily to flak fire (support carriers). Learning how to counter them and how to set up fleets effective in taking out various different treats is something the player should learn, not something a hardcoded limit should tell him to do.

As for the AI, that's pretty much broken in rebellion, if you judge the game by beta AI behaviour you'll end up making a mistake.

The ship supply limit is more of a performance issue than an attempt to limit our choices in producing ships. Sins is a few years old already, back then computers had issues taking so many entities moving around at once (probably more of an GPU and ram issue than a CPU one, though).

The only counter to that by vasari would be Orky + Subverters, or Subverters + Mines... or 10 Kostura Canons... which counters pretty much everything lol.  Volatile Nanites could use a buff thou. In which case it would be a viable solution.

No, the fleet limit isnt based on performance.  Otherwise it would vary with the map size.  You can, as it stands, over task your machine just by building a custom galaxy and going wild.  If you have a machine that can do that then why not allow you to crank up the fleet cap?  More than likely it was a gaming decision to force players to choose where to apply force in the game.  Otherwise each planet would be defended by hundreds of ships.

Realistically, each planet would have a defense force of hundreds if not thousands of ships but again, based on a game that was decision was made.  David Weber/John Ringo et all if you want the realistic side of solar defense.  Pod layers anyone?

No, this is something the AI did to me also in Rebellion but has been annoying me really since entrenchment.  Before entrenchment the static defenses were truly a joke and basically the only winning strategy was rushing.

The real loser here is capital ships when you have a high number of frigates in a single battle.  Why waste 50 capacity on a Kol that has at most 50/30/15 attack (or something) when you can have 10 cobalts with 11 each (110 per second).  Add the defenses in the mix, the Kol can only engage at most 3 ships and will definitely be rubble by the time it gets past the first target grouping.   Now upscale that to say 400 capacity and it is even more disparaging for cap ships.  Like the dinosaurs at some point.

And dont even get me started on a siege with only strike craft...

-Jason

This is an awful idea lol
In an RTS you should be able to build your fleet however you want to build it.

You just need to learn how to counter 1 ship fleet attacks. It's not that hard once you learn how. 

I have been playing for six years, trust me, I know...  The point is that we need more pregame options.  Setting a small fleet size does nothing except make defense more sustainable against mixed fleets. 

Sins, btw, is not RTS.  Read the manual, or even the website:  "Sins of a Solar Empire is a “RT4X” game, blending the epic strategy and empire management of the 4X genre with the fast-paced and tactical elements of real-time strategy."

If I wanted RTS I would play on my Xbox.  This game is much more than just an RTS shooter.

-Jason

Why would anyone said ship need limited because they playing a very, very hard level? I play hard level, just right after normal level, I had no problem a.i. spam lrm, I can deal with it.

Err... no.

I don't know about anyone else but I love harassing my enemies with fleets of hundreds of corvettes.

I CAN fight off fleets of 200 frigates, it's not a problem for me.

Shooter = action game = bunch of ships blowing each other up.  Again, this isnt RTS, its supposed to be an expansion of the traditional 4X. We are not supposed to just throw big fleets at each other.  Right now there is no balance.  Also, nice language, argue much?

More edification.  There are more RTS games now sold on consoles than on computers: Halo Wars alone sold over a million copies in its first year alone: http://www.vgchartz.com/article/3189/halo-wars-ships-one-million-units-worldwide/

Google it for yourself, the reason the PC market isn't obsolete is because the games are more complex than would allow a console.  But if it devolves into just throwing units at each other then it doesn't need to be PC.

The AI cheat isnt what you think it is.  The reason the AI will always be faster is that it will do everything simultaneously and can do all of these things at ever increasing levels.  It can build ships on 12 different worlds and upgrade defenses on all of them without the human "what the hell do I do next" delay...  That is what makes it hard, I dont see it getting 8x the money or resources, that wouldn't make any sense.  That would actually be a kind of stupid AI level system, its only harder because it gets more money?  No, the upper level AIs have more tendency to rush, they build much more defenses instead of just sitting on their cash.  My only real problem with the AI is that it ups it fleet cap so much that once you smash its initial fleet it takes it forever to recover since it has already chucked its economy.

I didnt think they have ever released the info on the AI, or at-least they shouldn't.  It would kind of be like giving away the opposing teams playbook.  If I am wrong please correct me because I want to read it.

/Agree

Don't know why people are even talking about this, its a foolish idea.

If you want a small scale squad based shooter go play dawn of war 2, in the history of any navy based military numbers have always counted. I have never personally had a problem with sins when people build nothing but frigs or corvettes. I always build a well structured fleet with logistics, command, cap support and anti corvette / strike fighter and I can take on hundreds of LRM's (or w.e the lil tec missile boats are called) no problem.

If a fully upgraded starbase gets attacked by 200 frigs? yes it should go down. Starbases, no matter how upgraded are not a hard counter for any decent attack, they will stop pirate raids, harassment and can even be used to disrupt trade routes and buy you time to get to the system with your fleet, they are not supposed to defend a system against a large scale attack and destroy the attackers.

If you know how to play with a minimal amount of skill then a single unit spam can be very easily countered, adding a ship cap would destroy many builds and strategy's that people use, no ship cap allows you to customize your fleets in a way that work with your play style.

So let me get this straight..  You play on massive levels with the maximum AI count (which will inevitably gang up on you) with the highest difficulty and you're getting your butt kicked by one of the most basic and least effective strategies in the game so you want it nerfed (which would actually make the AI harder).

Beyond that, the easiest thing in the game to counter is a spam.  While I don't play against vicious AI's, I will say that your best bet may be to invest in light carriers and kite like your life depends on it.  They have significantly more flexibility than other units as they can create fighters (which would maul an LRF spam) or bombers which, well, we all know what bomber spam does to fleets lol.  Using LC spam may be the only way to survive wave after wave of enemy onslaughts.

Corvettes would also be a good choice in your situation if you had any supply available.  Of course, you'd need some sort of advanced warning, so for that you need to scout.

I'm just perplexed why you want to put a cap on a single type of unit.  That's what confuses me.  When the enemy spams a unit, they leave themselves wide open to a counter.  The fact that you died to a fleet of 100 Illums has nothing to do with Illums being OP or massed LRF being OP.  It has everything to do with the fact that you were playing against an opponent that can produce effectively infinite units.  Remember the old adage: "work smarter, not harder."  The higher ranking AI's will only ever work harder.  They will work harder than you will ever be able to.  They build faster, better units than you and you're going to have to live with that.  You have to be smarter than the AI to beat them.

I'm just so confused that you think a unit cap would be beneficial..  It would make the AI significantly harder because it would no longer make the stupid mistake of spamming a single unit.  If you're faced with massed LRF, build mass flak, fighters, or corvettes.

The most powerful fleets contain a balance of unit types.  Fleets containing a single unit type are the weakest and you seem to think that they are OP..  That's what confuses me so much..  If you're having a hard time with that, perhaps you should try a lower difficulty AI because methinks the source of your problem is that you're playing against opponents that your skill level is not high enough to defeat (no offense meant here, they do have the ability to create anything they want whenever they want after all, so not being able to take down a bunch of vicious AI's isn't abnormal).

I think seriously, there should be a limit to number per type of all units. Additionally, the total number of cruisers should never surpass the total number of frigates, for added realism. And finally, superweapons should have a random chance to misfire and explode, destroying the host gravwell and halving the resident planet's population.

I mean, why stop to one (stupid?) idea.

''Why dont you just mod the fleet supply to be really really low? that will make every single ship very special and important''

 Actually, on that great point why not just make a mod for yourself If you only play singleplayer, instead of calling out the entire game to be radically changed for your preference?

It baffles me, because as already stated there are already counters in place , so instead of calling the game mechanics to be changed because you can not beat a AI spam ,why not learn the counters?