AI mid-late game economy bloat

[Honarius]

So far in every game I've played the AI runs huge deficits on their economy due to their fleets they mantain. On my current playthrough I am on veteran, it is 2043 and every AI is bankrupt. I don't know how much this shapes their behaviour but it does make them feel very passive as they lack the ability to quickly expand and rebuild after a round of alien invasions. Perhaps the AI needs to be more aggressive with their fleets or be less enthusiastic about the ships they build.

[buddahx]

I would agree to the AI factions needing to be more aggressive. I don't know why they even build ships because I don't think I've ever seen them use them.

[Meow67]

Human AI is actually using ships, yet only like 25% of them. Most human fleets keep sitting in docks and waiting. Sometime they fly to mars to bomb my asset with single ship, or when i look to alien logs, they engage with aliens. Yet it's only sometimes….

AI just build some gunbouts and then look to space and they see that almost everywhere their ships get wrecked, so they are just afraid to lose whole fleets. Yet this also slows their progress as they basically use just old useless scrap, because they are not able to build ships with newer tech due to lack of command centers.

At this point it also makes it impossible for AI to build mining empires in space, to make their economy working well. Yea, sure they have fleets of useless gunboats, but that's where it ends.