Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Not sure of the entire answer to your questions. 8)

I'd be happy to let seekers go after sat in part because I assume sats do not maneuver much, if at all. (Or at any rate that's a Handwavium means of explaining why the seekers can take on sats but not fighters).

Fighters use weapons of a smaller class than the sats do; allowing the sats to be immune to weapons that they can themselves fire creates an assymetry that you described how to exploit. IMO it would be better if that particular assymetry wasn't there.

I don't find the battle pods concept a bad one for the game in principle, given its limitations (lack of strategic and tactical flexibility, compared to a ship - but cheaper! Humans can make you pay for using this tactic, and if the AI paid more attention to warp point defences, it might too. 8)