[LintMan]

I agree it's a play balance issue, but given my love for large fleet clashes, it makes that a bit tough. I also think it hurts the AI sometimes (see below).

I also agree that real-life fleet costs are expensive, but it couldn't be 250% a year! The would imply that a $20 million jet would cost $50 million a year to maintain, or a $500 million aricraft carrier would cost $1.25 billion/year!

I'm not really hurting for resources, and am able normally able to keep 50K+ of reserves, while doing heavy colony expansion/development. But I'm in a peaceful mode with almost no fleet to speak of. But once I start putting together a few decent fleets (not unreasonable for an empire with 30-40 planets in 20+ systems (I'm playing a huge 255 system map)), my production and expansion capacity will go to nil.

That's really not that bad a thing for me; I almost expect it, but I think it hurts the AI a lot. I think in a game like mine where there is a long period of buildup before contact and war, the AI drains a lot of its resources building and supporting ships that goes mostly unused and become obsolete before they're needed. If the maintenance was less, it could have used those resources to expand and research and maybe it wouldn't have gotten so far behind.