We're fixing that by tweaking the econ up, remember?
I reallly, really do not want to reprice every plasma ship. Especially when the SIT's make such a handy reference.
i guess just giving them more money can work, it's gotta be the simplest solution and God know we need SOMETHING simple.
More money and/or tweaking parts sounds reasonable to me. Ultimately, if it isn't competitive the game won't go but a few turns.
The most important part with getting this to work the first time will be flexibility to tweak things mid campaign (because there is no way you will get the balance right straight out of the gate, as it is to complicated), this will require the players to be more interested in having the server last longer, than winning. To me whatever system allows for a meaningful setup of competitive combat is fine, the longer it last the better, and I don't care about the score at the end of the campaign. What will cause this effort to fail is if folks are more interested in winning than playing.