[arthurtuxedo]

Hmm. And that works, in your experience with the mod? Because it seems to me that people can use orbital shipyards to build lots of them in parallel, thus making build time less relevant and allowing them to build up to their resource limit that's determined mostly by maintenance. In most of the SE games I've played, there's been enough time in peace time to build arbitrarily large fleets with this method, because only a large fleet can break through stacked defenses on a chokepoint, and it would take the other guy just as long to build a fleet capable of doing that.

Seems like building a bunch of base space yards and then stacking defenses like crazy to stall the enemy while the space yards build hundreds of dreadnoughts is the path to victory. Sure, it will take a few dozen turns to get the things built, but the low build rate will allow you to construct more of them in parallel, and hundreds of dreadnoughts would mop the floor with a mixed force of a few dreadnoughts, a few dozen battleships, and a few hundred cruisers.

Also, the longer peace time goes on, the more an initial force of destroyers and cruisers will get replaced by dreadnoughts.