as a little follow up to my comment about context, one type of context the game HAD was the fact that in order to sustain the supply cost of a large fleet you kinda had to risk it in battle to make the monies you need, in battle you may lose your stuff and be knocked down to the early-game AGAIN, having to sometimes play the early-game multiple times stretched the game out a lot for me, and the TERROR of losing a big fight and getting knocked down again added a lot of WEIGHT to those fights, now however, many fancy ships and weapons need blueprints to be found much, so they require a colony, but once you have a colony you have so much passive income that you can just directly rebuild your late-game army should you lose it (also btw, late-game fights are not by themselves as fun to FLY as mid-game fights, they are only satisfying for me in the sense that the fleet i have worked hard through challenges is now finally paying off, watching swarms of strike-craft obliterating enemies is quite cathartic). i think colonies should have their maximum net income restricted with some kind of progressive income tax, say making an infinitely good colony generate 200K monthly, but conversely a bad colony should have its potential net loss limited in the same way to -200K