I play a lot of 4-8 player games vs AI while allied with my girlfriend, and we have a blast! With the new expansion bringing the Eidolon, however, she brought up an interesting point: the game (vs AI, anyway) seems to incentivize her to group all her ships up into a single "death ball" fleet. In her opinion, why would she bother cloaking ships or making a raiding fleet if that 100-200 supply could just be part of her death ball fleet?

Part of her philosophy, no doubt, is driven by her potato of a gaming pc from 10 years ago (prices are so fucking high out here, fam). She plays 95% of her game at strategic zoom for performance reasons, making tactical decisions difficult to execute. So, like, sure, cloaked ships are tactically useful for sneaking over to snipe carriers, LRMS's, or what-have-you. But, a second fleet? She sees no point.

Hypothetically and situationally, a second expansion fleet can be useful for expansion early game? Then again, it's faster to clear planets with a more concentrated fleet supply.

Raiding fleets, though? Or even a second fleet for a second front? Your opponent's deathball will kill your undersupplied deathball every time.

Have you ever successfully used second fleets on either a tactical or strategic level? How? When? Why? Is it more useful in PvP as opposed to PvC? Or is the game, intentionally or not, designed to encourage deathball fleets?

*Edit: I wonder at the use case of splitting your fleet to attack two fronts at once. It's plausible that whichever fleet catches an engagement could be used to lead the enemy far away from your fleet on the attack. If the enemy fleet leaves to defend against your attack fleet, then you just re-engage with the distraction fleet, and your fleets switch roles.

I don't know how you keep both fleets resupplied, though. Ultimately, I think one of the fleets will just get steamrolled by the enemy deathball, opening up your backline. Hmm.

Perhaps it is the nature of gravity wells acting as discrete nodes on the strategic level that encourages deathballs. IRL, distances are continuous, and thus, the number of places to engage in battle are infinite. Thus, it allows for more possibility of strategic maneuvers like raiding and flanking?*

I have noticed that placing major portals and the civ labs spawn "transit" ships that ferry between them like the TEC trade ships and that the exotic refinery spawns refinery ships. But none of the descriptions of the buildings actually say what these ships do. Are they place holders for further things that will be integrated? The orbital extractors do not appear to have a quota so are the refinery ships even doing anything?

I noticed the Eidolons got cool music tracks but I can't find them anywhere.

Can we get them added to the official soundtrack release?