[dogscoff]

The exploit was that you could send a med ship with a cure level of 10 to a planet with a severity 80 plague. The med ship would (eventually) bring the severity down to 20, and then you could send in your other med ship (with cure level 20) to finish the job.

I like my second Version better=-) You lose the "low level ships can partially cure high level plagues" bit, but it's much simpler and maybe that could be added in some other way. It's still an improvement over the existing system.

Oh, and I love the idea of increased risks from messing around with biological weapons.

Infection rates would be cool but it would mean an awful lot more data to track. Would be very cool though.