OK dove into DB some more. By year 17 of the game they have 32 ships * 10k tonnage + 16 * 10k + 20k * 4 = 560k military tonnage. This military costs (assuming build cost =BP cost) 128k BP. They also have commercial ships but I am not counting any of them (5 slave ships, 3 salvager, 2 troop transport).
Frankly this is less than most NPRs start with so I don't think the amount is a problem, but it does sound like a bit more of a ramping-up would help the Raider play pattern make more sense to players?
Do NPR really start with that many ships? I checked my NPR at year 17 and it's not that far off from raiders
now.
At this point NPR has 3 Alpha, 8 Bravo, 28 Delta, 3 Echo, 3 Golf, 21 Hotel, a bunch of civilians, 4 mike, sierra 20, whiskey 12. Here is rough BP cost:
2. 4k+ 8k+28k+ 3k+ 5k+ 42k+ 3k+ 60k + 24k = 175. 4k BP of military fleet. It is 37% more then raider fleet by cost, but their tech sucks quite a bit.
Ramping-up would be very nice for sure. The raids, the sneaking about, really adds to the atmosphere. If their numbers were growing linearly that would help a lot to be prepared.