The new Ellydium ships are supposedly released one after the other on a roughly monthly base, one after another. They can be build by gifted players in a super-over powered (super-op) way! Like the Thar’ga, it is so op because it has no counter. What if a release would have included also new Elly frigate and Elly interceptor. Pilots would have been able to buy/grind their loved ship class and in the battles the Thar’ga would have met one of its natural counters like an Elly frigate (frigate beats > fighter beats > interceptor beats > frigate…).
It would be reasonable to release the new ships in sets of three ships representing all 3 ship classes in each new release step. On a e.g. tri-monthly base Elly ships should be released in a set of 3 ships via major patches (1.4.0 > 1.4.1 > 1.4.2 etc.)
This could be accompanied by minor patches representing minor adjustments to module/ship/weapon over- or under-poweredness. To hedge the amount of variables to be fine-tuned it would be patched in a tier related manner: 3x Elly ships but restricted in research or development up until rank 6/tier3 in first minor patch, followed by a new minor-patch open up to rabk-barrier of next tier (t2>t3>t4>t5).
In other words, why not release Elly interceptor:recon + Elly fighter:gunship + Elly frigate:long range up until tier 2 (that is: blocked research-roundel from access to nodes higher than rank 6)? This would give op Elly ships like the Thar’ga its natural counter: Elly frigate + Elly interceptor - right from the start!