@ StarGibbon: Or stick with what works. My current game is my first 0.8 game. I did not know of all of the gameplay changes at the time. I did what I knew best, and adapted as I played. Just because I might be able to kill things with a smaller fleet at greater risk does not mean I want to do it.
My apologies. You said you were at the level cap and unable to fund your fleet travel, so it seemed to me that something *wasn't* working for you. And I don't take risks. One thing about playing without save-scumming is that it turns you into a coward. I dont engage in risky battles Im not confident in. My fleet isn't particularly small, but it is efficient and sufficient for the task its designed for. If I want to go on some survey/salvage runs, I take my salvage freighter ships out of storage, and put the bulk of my heavy warships in, not designing for heavy combat.
To each their own, but outside of battlestations the game no longer poses any significant challenge with access to fully outfitted capital ships.
I do not want a challenge if there is a way to solve a problem trivially. I will accept a challenge if there is no other way to win, but if I can stack the deck, with resources provided by the game, to destroy a challenge (e.g., stacked ECM and Paragon to destroy battlestation), I will do it! In other words, I play with combat-as-war mindset, not combat-as-sport.
P.S. In other words, the challenge is not always the fight itself, but planning and exploiting resources to destroy the fight before it begins, or to make the inevitable fight as easy as possible.
As I said to each their own. Capital ships in the game currently feel like an "I Win" button in the players hands, and god mode bores me personally, so after I take a victory lap or two with them it's time for a re-roll. That will hopefully change when long term goals are added to the game and I feel like Im working towards a goal other than just being able to defeat AI fleets, or the economy tightens enough that fielding a capital ship is a difficult economic decision to make and requires substantial trade off. Currently fielding a capital ship is a fairly trivial matter for the potency they provide. A Paragon can wipe an entire fleet single-handledly without getting a scratch on the hull.
The only real goals available in the game at present are character advancement and fleet potency, and the level cap and capital ship acquisition signal the end game in those regards for me.
Wherever *you* gain most of your enjoyment from the game is fine by me.