Self replication

[Guard]

I am working on a mod involving an alien race of giant bacteria. Each ship is fighter sized and contains a fighter bay which produces the same ship. After a lot of tweaking i sorted the speeds on the fighter bay so that I get a nice exponential effect with their reproduction; 1,2,4,8,16 etc, and they are weak enough that a good ship can take out large numbers.

However, in the simulator or more rarely in the real game, after a battle is completed and zooms out and if the bacteria have survived, the game crashes. This doesn't always happen; if the bacteria are all destroyed, or if the player retreats before many have reproduced, the game runs as normal.

The problem can not be that there are too many ships as production eventually stops when they reach their limit, is there some other reason why this would not work? Thanks