So, I did something a bit different this playthrough and really pushed the civilian lines with a ton of requests. As a result I have 11 civilian lines, the largest of which has 25 ships, most are 10 to 15. Total of 173 merchant ships, which dwarfs my current warship fleet!
This is all fairly early, as I am just barely into Ion tech, with 12 populated colonies. Largest is Mars with 538 mill, but most are much smaller. Next larges is 14.3 mill, most are in the 4 million range.
So far, I am pretty happy with the way this is working out. I can slap down a colony pretty quickly with the civvie freighters, and most importantly, I dont have to micromanage freighters!
How does this line up with the rest of yalls playthroughs?