Could you report a bug on the bug tracker (http://dev.helium-rain.com) with your save attached when that happens ?

Will do once I have it happen again.

Done.

Thanks !

I examined your save and it appears your others ships are "In reserve".

For performance reasons, we can't spawn too much ships in the active sector so only 50 ships are spawned (you can change this settings in the settings menu).

However we may have to review the spawn proportions.

On this topic I would almost prefer the game to increase the limit to 200 or 300, even if it means running the game at 75% speed (slo motion) to give the computer enough time for the added calculations, but that's just me....picturing massive amounts of ships on screen buzzing about :)

Perhaps on the Beta Branch you could test an settings option for UNLIMITED ship limit, with a reactive game-speed multiplier tied to FPS. (If the game detects less than 40 FPS (or some other FPS target) it slows the game down 5% at a time until the FPS goes back to acceptable levels.

This would would mean that the game speed would be dependent on the PC specs, and some players would play the same save file at slower speeds than others, but it would effectively allow players that want more ships on screen to have them.

just my 2 cents...

We don't want large number of ships because the game doesn't have a meaning in that context. The UI would need a complete redesign, large parts of the economy would need to be changed and of course the performance would suffer too. We're a very small company and we have to put priorities, the UI - a third of the full game code by volume - can't really be re-done at this point, for example.

What should happen with the final released game is that AIs should be smart, scrap obsolete ships and build more advanced ships to keep a constant volume.