"I am personally (given my newness to actually playing SEIV - on turn 32 of my second game) extremely surprised as to the size of the fleet - 300 ships?? I presume these are all dinky types?"
Not always. In one game my warp nexus defenses bLasted at least that many AI *dreadnaughts* into gas. Without loosing a unit
Favorable rate of exchange indeed..not all at once fortuntely, but one of my allies had over 500 ships; not all dinky by any means.
Phoenix-D