issue is not scaling itself (kay this is not level based, but looks like level based anyway, ever if you read all lore and dialogs carefully, it still looks like level based) , issue is spiky and jiggy nature of scaling, i will be happy for drone stuff scale much higher, and eventually spawn "dat volandemort REDACTED stuff" as part of defense for typical probes, this will be quite funny, and i will be happy to find insane deathball final boss on cryosleeper with multiple 30 stacks waiting for hour long battle with multiple turns.
but...
It should scale much smoother, it may scale faster and higher, but scaling should be smooth, probably game should first maximize number and size of ships, and only after that start to remove dmods, transition from bunch of heavy dmodded drones to stack of cruisers in pristine condition can be single combat, as script record deployment cost of defeated ships, and that result in exponent growth, but it should be logarithm instead.