I kinda have mixed feelings on the ship cap.

I agree, that on larger maps, the ship cap should be a bit higher, but on the flip side of that, the AI will have just as much. So you'll run into the same problem, just with more ships and a better chance to lag your system.

my two coppers.

That's true. But there should be some kind of leeway when you expand that much and have to fend off from other star systems...

A thought: Make the max fleet cap 100 per planet, with a minimum of 2k. Scale the price of research with the amount added.

I.e. a 40 world game would have a max cap of 4k supply, and fleet cap increase techs would cost roughly twice as much (upkeep scales naturally, so no adjustment needed there).

The number per planet could be up for adjustment.

See, this is where I kinda have to play devil's advocate with the dev's creation. They chose the fleet cap to keep it fair for the online play....but with realism in mind, they should have used the fleet size dictated by empire size. yeah, its unfair for multiplayer matches, but when you're dealing with between 4 and 10 computer opponents, it gets kinda tedious trying to jump your fleets, lets be optomistic and say you have 7 to 8 fleets (2 caps each) at the end of a long game, trying to guard an empire thats twice the size, if not bigger, than said force. meanwhile, attacking the computer is almost a futile gesture. sure, you could mass your fleets or perform a bunch of smaller attacks, but chances are, while you're pulling that off, you're also getting slammed by either an opportunistic AI, or the one you're attacking either has more than you do in the engagement, or decides to ignore you in favor of launching an assault on your basically undefended worlds. Or here's a good kicker. The AI decides to get smart, and allies with another AI. Now, when you attack with all you're naval might, thinking you'll at least get a stand up chance against the ai's fleet...now he's technically doubled the size. too bad when you're aligned with an ai, they tend to do nothing except jump around your territories.

What a diffent that make? if IronClad give more fleet to you so they will get more fleet. I guess no one is Invincible alone but God is, get allies if you can get if able.

I'm starting to think that playing in larger maps is near impractical given certain circumstances like the one in my example...

I'd better be sure to start at the edge of a galaxy so that I can work my way through the other star systems!  

Trying to get allies in single-player? Good luck with that. The only thing diplomacy allows is to do the AI bidding. It's not as if you can bribe them with resources, technology or ships. As for pirates, I bribed them all the way to go for the other races but it didn't seem to work that much in the later part of the game...