ship limits and surrender

[Puke]

so i was pondering the pros and cons of low-ship-limit games. i was thinking, hmm, sometimes good, sometimes bad.

but the interesting thing is this. say you have an alliance. in a low ship limit game, its better to have two empires fighting together than it is to have one empire twice the size. because with two empires, you can field twice as many ships (assuming you are producing enough to quickly hit the ship limit).

now, what happens when the game winds on? say an empire with 90 planets is allied with an empire with 10, and the ship limit is something like 100 ships. well, it would sure as heck benefit both empires for the bigger one to fork over 40 planets so they can both produce ships quickly and keep a joint navy of 200 ships, and replace them as soon as they are destroyed.

now, what happens when an empire with 100 ships surrenders to one with 100 ships, and the ship limit is 100? do half the ships go poof? do the new ships not get transfered with the surrender? or does the empire get to have 200 ships until some are destroyed, and he just cant build any more until some are destroyed or scrapped?

i guess this would be pretty easy to test, but im pretending to work at the moment, and it would be sort of hard to start a game. anyone know how this works, or have any ideas about it?

oh, and as a disclaimer, i would never advocate using surrender to bypass ship limits in a multiplayer game. i advocate using alliances to get arround it, but not surrender. if it is possible to get arround it that way, its an exploit that needs to be fixed.