Necro :

NPR's often go crazy with amount of warships they have - i have a hard time to follow because i cant stand the thought of my ships named "something 004 etc" and i insist on naming them all which is tedious as frakk.

But back to the topic :
Back in 6.4 ( well before NPR's started using fighters ) i had an enemy ( regular not spoiler ) who stormed the Sol system, oh every year or so with ~500 Fast attack crafts.
And earlier i had a play where 3 npr's were killing each other by the hundreds to gain control over one crucial crossroads system - cue my exploration ship entering the system and seeing 1200 + wrecks ( and it was before the "salvage nearest wreck" conditional order .. ).

BTW : we should really have some kind of "Most epic battle you ever had" thread here ...

it was earlier as well
especially when you are in late game and new NPR is created
they can create / build  lots of ships within few years

battles with million tons per side are not rare in aurora

Maybe not a spoiler, but I have been killing ships like hell. Somewhere around 50 destroyers (7700 tons) and some 25 heavy cruisers(15000 tons)and still they come, the latest group 8 battleships? (38000 tons), 3 battlecruisers (24000 tons) and 4 CAs. Missiles loads are down to under 20%
Never have I had these large fights before, I was lucky to only lose a BC and 12 fighters when I jumped into that system, they were waiting , managed to retreat and put several bases on the warppoint and destroyed that fleet when thay jumped thrue.
Any new programing for NPR starting forces or have I been lucky before?

But its fun!