I agree with Strongbad, until they overhaul the mechanics, it's pretty difficult to take the game seriously.

SG7 and ChickenHawk, the two of you probably log more hours in this game than everyone else combined. You are online constantly. So for you to claim that the gameplay is balanced is also hard to take seriously. If you are building 100+ battleships in 4 hours, that means you have at least 10 full population colonies with enough RO at each to keep up production. Obviously, you are Traders, because neither other class has the faintest chance of keeping up with that rate.

As I was explaining to ChickenHawk just before he double crossed our alliance (haha), my entire objective on Nergal was to see how much RO I could collect as a Warlord without trading. I suspected it wasn't possible to reach 440k and I was right. Even with a number of Jovian outposts and rank 9 in Advanced Materials Collection, do you want to know how much RO I have? 34k. And that's with spending NONE of it along the way. I could have researched Capital Ship Construction days ago, but what would be the point? Build 5 dreads and then be completely broke?

Now, I was playing what I consider aggressively in terms of expansion, but obviously not even close to aggressively enough compared to what these guys are doing. Maybe the game just isn't for me, but if it's about crapping out outpost and colony ships 24/7 and micromanaging where they go, I'm not interested. I already spend more time on this game than I want to, if you want people like me to keep playing, you have to do more to level the playing field.

Here I am thinking I'm being productive building 4 battleships an hour, and then these guys talk this nonsense. It's silly.

Also, protip: Traders are broken.