[Barnacle Bill]

The problem seems to be that the AI can't handle when you use large numbers of fighters defensively. When you are on the offense with fighters, you are limited by the need to build & maintain the carriers and transport replacement fighters to the front. Fighters are not a problem for humans, because they just adapt. The AI, though, can't deal with the defensive strategy of a human having every planet build fighters continuously and launch them.

Other than maintenance, there are a few ways to deal with this:

1) Make fighters have to land in the same strategic turn in which they were launched, like fights in Civilization, Empire, etc... This would require a change in the current system in which they can't move on the system map in the turn of launch, which would in turn require the program to track which had already moved that turn. However, it would no longer need to track fuel so this should be a wash, programming-wise. This would limit the fighters in a system to what would fit in planetary cargo.

2) Eliminate the ability to launch fighters from planets. I think this one could be done as a mod, without programming changes. In conjunction with this, a programming change could make it possible to put fighter bays on WP's. That would not really solve the problem, though, as you could still launch the fighters and stack them up in space infinitely. Just eliminating the planetary launch ability would also let you keep piling them up in space, but you'd be forced to build a base at every planet with enough fighter bays to launch one turn's worth of production. #1 is a better and more realistic solution.

3) House rule - this is an "AI can't deal with human strategy" issue, so just don't use that strategy,