Is there anyway to make fleet battles have less ships?
Generally I’d suggest that you want to restrict the amount of resources that players can get their hands on. Less money is less ability to build ships and maintain them. So you options would be: 1) Play on a small quadrant, packed with players so you only have a system or two per player at the beginning. Every ship counts and making the most of your research, desgns and strategies will be important. Of course if you do well you’ll end up expanding and owning more ships but you will most likely spend a long time with resources stretched very thin. 2) If you are happy to do some data file editing, create a Player Trait that reduces all mineral / organic / radioactive income by a desired percent (costing 0 racial points) and manually add all players into a game with this trait chosen. All money will be scaled down and fleets will be smaller accordingly. 3) You could even boost the effects of ship and fleet experience if you were looking to reward keeping ships alive. Option 1 is the easie
