Exactly. In my particular case, after rushbuilding 70 LCs to fend off an invasion, my colonies have finished their facilities, and I'm sitting with a combined $500,000 profit margin.
Even my BattleMoons only cost a few thousand to maintain, so I'm upgrading all my ships to A+ armor.
I have no issues with retroseries, since repair rates are fairly low in P&N. ShipYards only fix 1 to 3 components per turn, requiring dedicated repair bases. Even with a stack of Living Ships at the spaceyard, I can only retrofit one LC per turn.
My battlemoons are even more repair hungry, since that retroseries requires 3&1/2 years to build the core, plus 700 components to be repaired. Repairs take 3 years for the battlemoon alone (living ship), only slightly better at a major ShipYard.
And, I'm not even using the 3x smaller PPA yet.
My workaround so far is to add another 0-KT Buckytube Gel Armor to all my designs. Without that 0-KT component, I'd be forced to retro through a third design, which is kinda silly.