Yeah, sure, tanks do not need infantry support, battleships and carriers need no escort of destroyers, frigates and corvettes, or cover from aircrafts, missiles, submarines.

WE ARE EACH A NATION — INDEPENDENT, FREE OF ALL WEAKNESS. YOU  CANNOT EVEN...BEGIN TO COMPREHEND OUR EXISTENCE! (mass effect 1, Sovereigns speech)

my Dreadnoughts are perfect and a gun is a gun. If I make a fleet they all go the same speed and the have the same hull. And they are deadlier because of it.

DARCA

The issue of ship spam really boils down to two issues:

1. Low production capability means longer construction time for larger, more expensive ships.   So smaller, cheaper ships are sometimes preferred by both the AI and the human player.  Not often for the AI, so far as I've seen, but it does happen.

2. High production capabilty means less time to produce the small cheap ships. Also, Super Dominator ability.   So in no time at all you have hundreds of the things buzzing about.  And if they aren't destroyed, they stick around forever and ever until the 'mop-up' phase or until their empire starts to go bankrupt from the maintenance.

Here's a solution for you.  When combat ships are deemed by the AI (or the player) to be obsolete, and are scrapped in friendly space, the scrap value does not go into the treasury (unless the treasury is in the red).  It instead creates a temporary bonus to military production (funded at the same rate as bonus production, unless the economics of GC3 are way different in which case it just doesa part-way rush of production) that turn at starports building new combat ships, as the materials are recycled into new ships.  In addition, the experience gained by the ship crews is pooled and applied to new combat ships coming off the production line.

There you go.  Less pew-pew, more 'you may fire when ready.'

I am concerned that less ships mean a less challenging of a game. If we got a better fight with fewer ships then that would be fine. If we get less of a fight with fewer ships then why do you want that.

I do not see a particular problem with the AI spamming ships in GalCiv2.  When he is inferior technologically you cannot blame him of having hordes of ship to try to 'compensate'.  However AI is not big on upgrading and keeps his dinosaurs around, which is not the best strategy.

When I play GalCiv2 I normally have fewer  but higher quality fleets. I try to keep everything upgraded to the max or close enough.

Split manufacturing into resource production and ship assembly ....

Assembly plants require resources .... hence ship numbers will be limited by resource accumulation ... like money accumulates ....

Require specific resources for specific components.  .... 

In my little cloud of imaginary thought, it sounds reasonable, but programing wise,,, I don't know if it is a good idea or not. 

I am sorry no one responded the first time you wrote this. I don't think it's worth implementation. Given the AI would need to learn how to use this, and there's only one guy I know of doing that, Emperor Brad Wardell of the Stardock Empire. And this would take alot of work for one guy. IMIO in my ignorant opinion.

DARCA

Well we've heard that there are going to be specific resources in the game to wrest control of.  Endless Space does have specific resource requirements for higher-tech ship components.  If you don't have any of those resources then you still have access to the low-tech components.

Thing is though, I'm not sure that the AI will react well when the human player uses a strategy of resource denial and it then has to build low-tech ships.  I would prefer that they get the resources from an opportunistic third party and try to drive the player off its resources.

If they implemented a multiple-resource system like Sins (money, metal, crystals), they could also implement something like the black market. It's horribly inefficient but it gives any faction access to a resource they are missing at a stiff cost in the resources they have (selling metal to the market to get credits, using credits to buy crystals, etc.)

I am about to post a article on this along with other topics.

if the black market was represented by pirates in the beginning of the game and disappeared when the pirates are wiped out. Pirates would spawn like everyone else to start the game, just to be clear. Would that be okay, that way there is no long term dependence and the game moves on...if you want.

DARCA

It's necessary to the proper functioning of the game, so no. The whole point of it is that someone can't starve an empire by controlling only one resource - if I can take out your supply of crystal, the amount of money and metal you have would be irrelevant, since you couldn't do anything without crystal. The lack of an ability to convert one into the other would make a momentary advantage into a knockout blow - if you don't have much saved up, you can't build any new ships to take your supply back. Of course, it's a balance that needs to be hit properly; making resource attacks hurt without being an instant-win isn't always easy or obvious.

Three things

First I would like to see a black market option. I will say this again you can't have a black market unless you are selling things illegal. Things that are illegal would be different for different factions. I would like to see this on the game. 

Second I like the pirate idea of pirates running the black market. This would also include captured cargo.

Third even though this would not be a black market. I think a market option for selling resources would be nice. I even think I should have an option not to sell this resource, or I want to make a profit off this. If a faction is selling resources their should be a profit for the resources being sold, and the faction buying the resource would have to pay a price. Also a faction should have a choice to cut this off if they want to.

Interesting what frogboy said about the ai choosing from player designs,

Especially as i would tend to build ludicrous amounts of troop transports before even having half decent warships. Im sure the upkeep on these might change in this next game!

I hadn't considered the black market concept ... thats additional programing and an entire faction design no doubt. 

To me ship building and controlling ship spamming is the main goal.  Buy adding assembly tech to the research tree, ships can only be built at the speed of tech level, not economic wealth.  Wealth would be measured in resources and cash to buy them, but ships can only be produced so fast regardless.   

Also, manufacturing really is a split technology.  Assembly and resource production being split changes the colony management concept.  

Do you go for assembly tech and economy and simply purchase resources... Do you go for resourse production and assembly , then sell your excess ....

It adds a new layer of stradegy.  

Also,  using resource starving is a legit way to attack an enemy,  it is happening today irl. 

Okay well here's the thing.  Space is vast, so just because you park your ships on top of one main resource, doesn't mean there aren't secondary supplies.  It's just that they will take more credits to exploit that a primary source.