[Suicide Junkie]

While I haven't seen any Modder post something like this yet, consider the following:

There is no quantum reactor. You have to get your supplies for your ships at bases or planets. You mod some weapons to use 10,000 suplies to fire. It is now a base only or planet only weapon, regardless of size, unless the ship has a really big supply capacity.

To sum up, supplies are magically generated at certain locations in the game, yet we can control how many are used by ships. This allows us to limit some things ships can do. That translates to control, unless we toss the tool away by giving them cheap, light, quantum reactors, lol!

Pirates & Nomads (Link). Especially the new humans-only Version that I should be posting this weekend.
The humans only Version for PBW goes beyond what you suggest, and makes supplies a resource. There is no such thing as a quantum reactor, or a resupply depot anymore. The only ways to generate supplies are by:
a) Building a new ship with supply tanks. (They start full when constructed)
b) Solar panels.

One of the most critical designs for your empire will be the orbital power station. Fleet with the power station, and recharge. Note that bases have limited supplies, so you need to build more power stations in order to support a larger or more active fleet!

BTW - I haven't tried this yet, however, maybe with what we know now aboput AI behavior and creative manipulation of our components we could get those big ship engines so many of us wanted long ago.

What if Ion engine I was left alone, Ion Engine II was 50kt, and Ion engine III was 250KT. We increase their respective supply usages. Maybe tweak the ship sizes some. Would the ES,FG,DD,and CL use only the 10 KT modules because thats all that will meet their must have requirements, while the cruiser would go for the II Version because it's 'better' but the III too big?

Assuming that the Ion Engine II provides 5 standard movement, and the IE III provides 25:
What the AI will do is try to put the IE 3 on every ship. If it can't fit any engines on, it will either:
1) Abort the design (and thus be stuck with its old designs until it researches DS or LC tech)
2) Design ships with zero engines.

[ June 05, 2002, 14:13: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]