Do others feel that Cabal fleets feel too rare now?
I think I've seen an average of <=2 per cycle in my last game (10 cycles). And in that game and IIRC the last one as well, I never had a fleet I couldn't evade before I reached the point where my fleet is so big it scares all the Cabal tax collectors away. Well, not getting ganked by random elite-tier enemies in the early game is good, but I'm annoyed by the fact that I am effectively locked out of the Cabal submarket permanently because I have no source of reputation gain (at least without doing deliberately gamey things like scaling down to a couple of frigates and going to look for Cabaleros to pick on me).
Actually, that last one is annoying enough that I feel like coding a bar event where you can gain Cabal rep, through stuff involving gambling and drugs.
Yes I've seen them as too rare now. HOWEVER I am not sure they're ACTUALLY too rare. Why? Because I've seen a lot of them dying. If they're dying that means maybe enough are spawning but they just die before you see them. One thing I've noticed is that sometimes these small starlight fleets have non-starlight logistics ships that vastly slow down their fleet, which might result in them dying more easily. I also haven't seen any/many powerful starlight fleets, more just weaker ones, but again, are they spawning weaker? or are they just getting into more combat's than they used to. IMO it's probably the latter.
I think what starlight needs is improved burn speed (which you'd get by say preventing any logistics ships with 8 base burn speed from spawning in their fleets)... You might know better than me. I also haven't seen any starlight auroras and I have weirdly seen quite a few small all frigate+logistics starlight fleets.
edit: maybe i'm wrong.... I just saw a starlight fleet with an aurora, burn speed 9, but it's engaged in battle against a large mercenary fleet with a vindicator and max burn speed 7. It's going to kill the starlight fleet, and the starlight fleet was much faster. So I think starlight fleet's aren't too slow to run from big ai fleets.... but the starlight fleets might be attacking slash trying to extort money from gigantic ai fleets and getting themselves killed?
I waited and watched the cabal lose, they left the battle with 2 ships down from their starting 8 or so. One problem with the starlight constantly getting into fights is that... afterwards they refuse to try and extort me because their fleet is pathetic.... another reason more starlight cabal fleets don't spawn is maybe because the total number of starlight cabal fleets has a maximum number? but if they're all constantly fighting and getting whittled down to 1or2 ships.... that means you end up filling that maximum limit full of worthless garbage fleets with 1or2 super fast ships in each... these fleets constantly fleeing from everything and preventing new full force fleets from spawning?