In my current game I have 1700+ ships, 16000+ units and 1300+ bases and my ship -window opens in few seconds (800 MHz Athlon TB). Only when I am cloacking a fleets of 100 ships, it takes some time (1-2 min) to do this (I think there could be done some code optimization). Heh, I will see if I reach 5000 ships and 100000 units
If I do, I will take a screenshot of the scores and send it to the board
I have found that managing ships is not so hard if you develope some policies you follow. For example, use gathering points where all ships go when they are built. Keep them in fleets, not outside of them. Name ships so that you find them easily in the ship list, etc.
What I meant of reaching top limit of ships when it is not limited is that there must be a variable (word, double word or something) which is the hard coded limit for ships. Though it might be like 2 billion, so then it won't matter.
Have anyone reached a limit of how many ships can be added in a fleet (not meaning that you have 200 ships in a fleet when game ship limit is 200 ships)?
In one game I found out that ship limit counts also mothballed ships :/ So it does not help to make a huge mothballed fleet.