Greetings folks,
One of the features that helped with spending all that cash you had piled up was the leasing feature back in GC II. You typically had 3 payment options with the short term leases being more credits per week and the 'longer term ones' being fewer credits per week.
I am an economy of resource player, meaning I like to do the old Battle Tech Clans method and 'bid out' the conquest by trying to use the least amount of ships to get the job done.
While this will always leave me FAR down in the Faction and Military power, I like taking my 'superior tech fleets' to the enemy or neighbors and watching them battle it out and ultimately crush the opposing fleets.
However, I am not able to easily upgrade my fleets. I usually have about 2 to 5k credits in my escrow and keep it there to rush build if needed. Yesterday I upgraded just ONE type of survey ship. I had 6 on the board, it put me -$38,650 credits as soon as I updated the request. This immediately halted all production/research and ship building until I spent 20 turns clicking it over (while fighting I might add)!
Leasing would fix all my woes. I can go and upgrade the various types of my ships and get all my fleets (2 or 3) all upgraded and still have a small positive left over. Granting I would not be making 1200/turn and would likely be making only 4 per turn for 70 turns but hey, my ships would all be the newer tech level.
The glaring elephant is, no its not needed to beat the Ai, but hey its how I like to play and feel it should be back in (leasing). I know Mormegiel has stated he wants to get it back in and this post is asking for a 'kinda sorta' ETA.
Happy Monday!