Personally, regarding blobbing and stuff as a general tactic, the way that I play is fairly slow, methodical, and specialized based on the circumstances, you could tell me that it's a fundamental problem that it doesn't have to be played that way. You could tell me that blobbing is all you need to do. What you will not convince me of is the idea that a game needs to be torn apart from the inside out and completely restructured as a result of it. Why? Because I want to have fun with the game. If that means setting up restrictions for myself, then I will do it. I've used Mark III harvesters, and they're stupidly powerful, so I plan to avoid those upgrades in later games. After playing a game where my fleet proved to be enough, I added starships and used those as my own special forces unit because it would be more fun that way. You aren't in a pro gaming E-sports environment, and you don't need to treat everything you play as such. I know this argument is flimsy, but I believe that all of these tools are there to contribute to fun and interesting games, if you're willing to let those happen. It's like, if you played Technic on minecraft. You can generate infinite diamonds and dark matter just by building something cheap and leaving the game on overnight. But, you won't, because that isn't actually fun to do. Yeah, the game will need adjustment, that much is obvious, but it doesn't need extreme measures to harshly punish players in that sense.
The moment that you start taking measures like that, that's the moment that you immediately lock down all but the most optimal ways to play. I'll use Diablo 3 as an example. For the longest time, Inferno mode was more or less impossible. You not only needed perfect rolls on all of your gear, there were often only one or two skill builds that could even survive. Why? Because the game punished you so harshly for doing anything else. Why else do you think this mode was nerfed into the ground? Blizzard realized that games are supposed to be played, they aren't supposed to be insurmountable walls. All of the other skills that were awful were buffed, because using a variety of tactics is actually fun, yet you were never explicitly forced to do it. You were able to forge your own playstyle, around then... and that's kinda the reason why I don't think the game is as terrible anymore.
Furthermore, call the video game police on Elder Scrolls. Every game in that series can be broken balance-wise by mashing left mouse.
I dunno, the game needs adjustments, it has flaws, but some of the issues you have can be attributed to "I stubbornly use things that aren't fun and declare that the game isn't fun." That's like walking into a wall, telling us that it hurts, and continuing to do it for absolutely no reason until an architect comes in and rebuilds that part of the building to remove it. We'll see how avoiding the harvesters goes, and maybe consider sinking the 999,999 resources into merc ships as well. Keep that money spent. Challenge yourself to do stuff like that.
