[President_Elect_Shang]

If I can ever get the system generation working right the SFTC already has asteroid colonies.

Bigger fleets would be part AI but mostly the economics. Once again the SFTC has overly simplified economics. Economy should never be a factor, it is the build time of ships that keeps fleets down and makes ships valuable. If you want big fleets you will have to decrease build times which devalues individual ships. There are other problems with having massive fleets as well.

Special techs are simple enough and will come along as more mods are produced. SE4 has some great mods for special techs such as the AST. The species and tech line you pick changes everything you start with and can develop later. I am not sure if that is still possible in SE5 but I don't see why not.

As for the biggest ship I think it should be combat ships. As for the biggest surface area ship I would think carriers; clearly carriers, long and flat with bays running the full length on both sides. That is based on the mental image of carriers having bays leading directly into space. In most genres; BSG for example, that is not really the case. Yes the fighters launch directly into space; however, they are recovered at one point (one each side of the ship) and when another set of fighters needs to be launched they move them into the tubes where the last set launched from. So as I said carriers only because of the mental image I have. Romance, novelty, whatever.

I think I another point that needs changed is this whole kT thing. The scale of that gives me a headache. I was thinking of changing the SFTC units to HS; Hull Spaces. It won't really apply to fighters but since it is more arbitrary than kT it should still work.