In a nutshell, what I meant there is that battles are likely to have more even forces on each side, which makes them more challenging. Deploying an overwhelming force every time isn't "interesting". The "interesting decision" I mentioned is how much to deploy. You're measuring the cost of the deployment vs the payoff vs the risk if you don't deploy enough. Ideally, what you want to do - what's most economic - is to deploy the absolute least you can while ensuring you don't take significant losses. So, I really like that as a dynamic; with the optimal way to play also naturally being more challenging, and also letting the player challenge themselves to the degree they're comfortable with.
I'm a professional game designer, and here what i have to say.
I did a while ago this kind a approach for my Starcraft 2 map(i use sc2 as testing platform for my ideas), heres what i learned:
On start self balancing combat, where mobs and players always mostly equal in strength, was working very good. But as players gained more levels and powers this approach failed hard. Every one likes to see progression in game. From small ship to big fleet of battleships, from week guns to super powerful doomsday weapons. And in the end killing something you could not kill was ultimate reward. Right now CR limits player from using all his(her) fleet in battle and in the end player dosen see a progression. All he(she) see is a handful of frigates fighting all game. Plus burn system makes it impossible to play with big endgame ships, cos they so slow and you cant get in to combat.
Lets look at spaz for example:
You start with harmless ship, and you struggle bigger ships to get them for your self, and than you start carnage by killing every bigass ship that was a threat to you not long ago, ultimately you having lots of fun and almost no grief.
Now lets look at starsector now:
You start with harmless ship, and you struggle bigger ships. And when you finally get them your self you realize that you cant use them cos of supply cost + so little number of battles that they can fight(cos of low speed). So you get no fleet to fleet battles and even when you do find that bigass fleet that you cloud catch, you findout that you have to divide those hard earn ships to "play it strategically". So in the end you have few battles with almost no interest cos there are maybe 2-3 ships from your fleet.With gives you lots of pain and grief by managing those scares supply and even more pain waiting to restore CR.