a betting arena/tournament in which the player, and the AI teams, each have the same budget to purchase and design a small cheap fleet & purchase back-up weapons to fill their holds with & select captains from a jockey pool before being pitted against eachother one after another after another, with no opportunity to take the ships to the shop between fights. The tournament is fought within, or with access to at least, a dockyard and any ships lost by a team are salvaged, re-armed if they have the weapons to spare to replace any guns that were lost, and then stuck back into the fleet & sent back out to fight again until your fleet is wiped or you are the last one yet. There's a buy-in to join that includes the cost of the fleet and a portion of the jackpot, of which anybody who survives the first half of the tournament gets a portion of (with the winner getting the biggest cut and a re-fund on their fleet buy-in, and gets to keep the fleet, their guns, their pick at salvaging as much as they can of the defeated fleets before the tournie dockyard strip-mines the wreckage field for parts and gets to keep the officers they crewed the derby fleet with, who've at this point no doubt gained a butt-load of xp)
would be a good way to build-in a late-game high-challenge way for players to get to play with cheap, low-quality ships while fighting dangerous, high-level enemies piloting cheap, low-quality ships
