Alpha 27 has been released.
Fixes / Changes:
1. Refactored the "immortal fleet" code to be a bit less spaghetti-code and easier to maintain, match the Newbie Guide description and I fixed a couple of bugs found with edge-case stuff.
2. Fixed some text descriptions.
Neither change should require a restart.
Now that I've played with the "immortal fleet" option working... I think it's fun, and it definitely discourages save-scumming and makes Iron Mode a lot less about tediously avoiding any losses, ever. I do think I need to revisit how many Crew each class of ship needs to be functional as I get that part of the balance tightened up; it's still too cheap (imo, anyhow) to afford big fleets of big ships; I had a half-million credits after a couple of hours, same as Vanilla- the only good part about it was that I could spend it on something useful.
But I definitely think that I'd rather see people building bigger fleets of smaller stuff because it works better economically, because the results are cooler and more satisfying (again, imo), in terms of having a spectacular battle; it's a lot more emotionally satisfying to be able to fight a huge battle and take losses.
I also think that it's important to price fighter wings in terms of crew rather than initial price; IRL, the price of a fighter wing is all the money that goes into keeping the finicky beasts running and the huge amount it costs to train new pilots, and that probably needs to get reflected in the way this works; a Wing might be cheap on DPs compared to, say, a Destroyer, but expensive on Crew and thus more costly over time.
I also think Making Do is vastly OP in that context, and I'm thinking it needs to become a minor capstone buff, especially now that the tree it's in is inherently useful, instead of something you might drop a point or two into in late-game.