I'll note player owned Military Bases and HQ also spawn more ships than your personal income would imply. I've got a Paragon blueprint, and I see in my defense fleets I see things like 2x or 3x Paragons. Thats 1.2 million in just capitals in just 1 defense fleet. So even though my "tax" income might be 700,000 per month, and I can direct 250,000 of that to ships of my choice per month, my faction of 3 planets with Military bases can spawn in something like 4-6 million credits worth of ships every month as well. Given individual traders have enough cash on hand to pay me 100,000 to 200,000 credits to make a 1,000-2,000 unit delivery, and that is just 1 merchant unaffiliated with a government (independent for example), presumably there are trillions or more of credits floating around the sector. Assuming my faction is in fact shipping ~15-25% of all goods consumed in the sector, either my tax rate is crazy low, or my faction as a whole makes a lot more credits than I personally, as a single fleet commander, do.
That is not even including all the capitals for sale in all the military bases scattered around the sector which are presumably surplus and not the brand new production for internal faction use.
I guess the question comes down to what end game should be, and how to enforce that in a lore friendly way.
The main game loops are:
1) Fighting space battles
2) Getting better ships to fight those battles.
The second loop is done on the campaign map, and has multiple avenues, but at the end of the day, the whole point is to get better ships to advance game loop #1.
So how do you provide interesting fights to a late game player fleet, given most players will use the best ships they have access to? Artificially limit the player's fleet composition (i.e. enforce ratios or maximum number of capitals/cruisers/destroyers/frigates)? Scale the opposing forces up to match the player's capabilities? Keep previous fleet sizes but provide arbitrary buffs to the enemy fleet (increase damage, speed, range)? Other options? As noted, people are already capable of handling 20 conquests late game.
Or are people looking for a completely different game genre at end game, where the game shifts from fleet battles to some kind of master of orion top level strategy game? Less loop 1, more loop 2, and add a new loop 3 where you command the multiple fleets and the planets of your faction to towards some new goal?
I guess the way I look at it, by the time you can destroy fleets of 20 capitals, you've effectively won the game in its current state. Either the game can imply you've won by no longer sending stuff at you (at which point, what game loop are you having fun with?), or the game spawns fleets in order to give you something to do. Rather than giving you a hard stop end to the game, it currently gives you a soft end, so you can keep playing with those ships you've collected if you want by providing larger DP value fleets. I'm pretty sure Alex is working on and thinking of end game content at this point in time, with the current end game not being what he wants to ship the final game with. Frigate->Cruiser fleet build up feels like early game. Colony stuff feels like mid-game.
Towards that end, I guess I'd like to hear what kind of fleet fights do people want to see at end game? And how do you balance stuff to get there? If I'm reading some of people's comments here correctly, they want stuff to be more lore accurate and more properly simulated (i.e. tracking where each ship is built, how its fueled, supplied, etc). However, I wonder what cost such level of detail would come at, and where does the challenge come from late game?
P.S. I find if your computer can handle it, 500 DP total is pretty good late game. I generally field 2-3 capitals and 5 cruisers (plus a frigate or two to round it out). Even at minimum 200 DP, that is like an Odyssey + Conquest + 5 Herons (or 5 Apogees if fighters are contraindicated versus a Doom fleet) + tempest + omen. It also means I'm facing 7 capitals or 15 cruisers on the field simultaneously. Also gives the enemy a chance at taking out your stations.