Hello! First of all, I really think the mod is a great idea: It reduces performance issues from too many ships in late game; it makes the game feel more reasonable since we have in Sci-Fi genre and in reality way less more ships, that feel powerful on its own. Stellaris goes with the idea -> spam those battleships.
I did some testings around now. Stations are a problem, ecspecially in early game. AI is actually spamming platforms now and you cant breach through 20k station in 2250s.
I play ZoFE but sadly it does not apply to such. I guess you gotta change the thinking behind ships in general? Higher ship upkeep modifier to all? Naval cap down? I am not a modder, I play around save game files and can spot some errors nothing more, so you are the expert here.
So thats all I can say at first. I will continue looking into this. If I can help in any way, you wanna have some testings or anything, let me know. I really want this mod to work. Have a nice day!

Yours sincerely Vralr

Interesting note about defence platforms, can't say I've seen the AI do that!! Just to rule out the obvious, what (if any!) other mods are you running that impact AI behaviour / Starbases / Platforms?

Ugh. To be honest none Id say. ZoFE shouldnt impact AI just offering more stuff in late to end game. I always play on Grand Admiral with scaling difficulty to/at Mid Game ( if that changes anything ). Every other mod is purely cosmetic, because I want to keep vanilla as much as possible.

Ok. I again went over my mods in detail and I am sure I got nothing that affect AI building behaviour or similar, - if - I am not a total stupid existing body. Oh my "AI is spamming defense platforms" wasnt related to your mod, rather it was meant in general. I knew already that you wouldnt impact them in your mod. Apologies if I didnt clarify that. Anyway, have a good night or whenever you read this.

maybe I've missed something, but should the amount of fleet cap that ships take up be increased? Since currently corvettes still take only 1 fleet cap despite taking 10 naval cap. Means you can still drop the 20 corvette fleet if you're willing to eat the upkeep malus

@Pernie - that's something I've been trying to sort out from day 1, unsuccessfully though so far.

Vanilla's command cap & naval cap usage are tied to the same couple of parameters in each ship type's defining code. Haven't figured out how to reliably pass script values that vary by tech level and by nation into those parameters though, which is where the current approach came from despite it being a very 'dirty' way of achieving things.

Hello!
I've got an idea, but I am afraid that it wont be applied to mods that add shiptypes. I'd say you could replace every ship in stellaris with identical ones, increase fleet cap and size. Ofc you need to suppress the techs and replace them too?
Probably the idea doesnt work at all or is too difficult to code. Was just a suggestion.

@Vralr - Love where your head's at! That's actually exactly what I've been working on non-stop for the last few days; hard to tell right now whether it's just very difficult to accomplish or not possible to begin with, it's been proving exceptionally difficult to pass a non-static variable (inc. scripted value, scripted variable, and modifier) into any of the relevant ship_size parameters..

You forgot to nerf the megacorp buildings that give naval capacity. They still give 10+ which when abused, can make you wildly more powerful than the AI.

Oops, good catch - I'll chuck that in the list of things to sort out this next update, thanks!

Sub! How about you manage the fleetpower instead? Is it possible to make a cap there? So you can still spam around 100 corvettes but no more or just a few battleships. Just another idea

Ok! Hello again, I was playing some other stuff lately, so I couldnt answer or post any suggestions. Hope you still working on it. I may have a great idea that can be used abroad all mods. Correct me if I am wrong. What if you cap the Fleet Size ( e.g. from 200 to just 30 ), so that less ships fit in one fleet. And at the same time you code a maximum fleet cap, in a way, that you can just have 5 fleets ( depending on whatever, empire size, civics, tech ). Just an idea.

Ofc, may the AI is messy and has a fixed build order and just builds corvettes, while it could build battleships. May an AI weight to fleet management could fix this? So it is building equal parts of all ships in one fleet?

I love the mod, however I think some Event Fleets (esp. the Cultist Fleets) are way too strong after the buff to my empire - how can some rouge terrorist cult out scale their main planet ?