[geoschmo]

This is kind of interesting. You might be able to do something like this now by having two empires. You could gift all your planets, except a few with some resource storage facilities to him. He would have to gift you resources every turn, to keep your fleets from running short on maintenance. I didn't get from your post whether you just wanted to control the ships, or if you were going to build them as well. Either way you could do it, it just would change the balance point somewhat. If he builds the ships, he would then gift them to you.

To simplify matter you could have a protectorate or subgugation treaty between the two empires. As long as you are the one with all the ships, you would be the stronger empire by score because that is the lion's share of how score is calculated.

This actually could be very interesting to see in action.

Geoschmo