That is a pretty awesome overview there, exactly the sort of thing I was looking for! Much appreciated!
Many encouraging things - some disappointing ones, but all of them very interesting.
Seems to follow what I gathered from Steve's posts on the subject, especially the fleet composition stuff.
A bit concerned about those ship size ranges there. Seem to be a bit on the small side, especially compared to the spoilers. Swarm motherships in VB massed 60kt. Pretty sure I saw in C# a couple prec battleships/bases (I did not get a good look so don't know for sure), mass 45kt.
Don't like how the sizes are multiplicative. Would prefer if they were percentage based.
Have, say, 4 "size types", representing minor ships, major ships, and 2 magnitudes of capitals, each being between 150% to 250% the size of the preceding size type, perhaps with variations for purpose mixed in, depending on the design philosophy. So defensive ships may tend toward the lower percentages and offensive ships toward the higher ones, for example.
I actually like the fact that NPRs don't deviate and adapt too much strategically. Think it makes each one more unique and flavorful instead of eventually gravitating towards what is "best". Thankfully I already design my ships in a similar manner (ship tonnages being multiples of the smallest base hull), with at most, 2 distinct roles.
Extremely saddened that ODPs cannot be redeployed by AIs! I love the damn things and it would be great if they could be deployed liberally to protect NPR colonies. Maybe give them a single, small engine for relocation purposes only?
Surprised that only 3 out of 27 philosophies use shields! I find them quite useful.
The part about commercial ships is... worrying...
I find that if you want to do any sort of colonization in a decent timeframe and scale, you need lots of lift capacity. Which means dozens if not hundreds of freighters and colony ships. Also, spreading and splitting your lift capacity is generally a bad idea. Personally, I aim to build like 2 to 5 commercial shipyards with 5 slips each and just pump out freighters practically non stop. Not sure civilian ship logic can handle that sort of thing. Seems like NPRs are quite weak economically, which is incredibly unfortunate.
Did not know NPRs had troop transports and could invade! Very happy to read that! Probably a rare occurence, but nice that it can happen.
The information about ground force sizes is very useful as well, will have to increase the size of my military a bit and perhaps dial down a little on the integrated arty support that I place everywhere.
Think there's a lot that can be done with this system, so I'm happy that it exists. Hoping enormously that it gets expanded upon in the soonish future.