[Klauss]

General Hawkings:
As your borders expand, how much defense is required for the home system.

Good point. Of course everybody has to decide for hisself if a in-system ship/freighter has any value in a later game.

I mean: yes. (especially if point 3 is true)
Because
1. you can update older ship designs
2. you can mothball the system defense ships for emergency use
3. I hope MM will introduce a tractor beam technology which allows to transport such in-system ships and space stations trough warpgates.

Iron Giant
Maybe you played not much with fighters untill now. As they are presented now, they are somewhat underrated. But in the full Version they will be much more powerful, I think.

In SE3 it was only possible to use them from carriers, so I see its an advance if you give fighters a further function like travelling trough systems. (as it is in SE4) But we should not forget that they was also very useful in SE3 as short range fighters.

New (old) SE4 variants like short range fighters (without moving in system) or intersystem fighters (with possibility to warp) give a player more possibilities and ways to design his game strategy. (which is one of the basics of a good 4x game)
If everybody would be satisfied with the already existent the SE series would have been stopped by SE1.

klaus