yeah, i gotta go with SOCL's way of playing. its very possible to have a few systems under your belt and build many fleets like that and be able to afford it. Some games I build "Sector Fleets" to patrol & respond quick & a 3-4 super fleets to wreak havoc, but if I think the enemy is too strong, I will only commit a few resources to such fleets and spend the rest on 2-3 super, super fleets consisting of 100+ fighters and 3-5 SSDs & maybe a Death Star, that run thru every enemy planet in a system, invade it, garrison it, and will stick around long enough for the gen core 2s to be built, then i head to the next planet. Very slow, but it does work, and usually, I re arm the fleet while it is guarding a planet waiting for the gen cores. The size of my fleets alone make short work of any quick response fleets. If the fleets gets too banged up, I leave, get fixed up and come back later. The only thing I do with Rebed is enable all ships at the start of the game and make all opposing side ships only cost 1 maintenance point and I can still build these monster fleets.