Multi-core CPUs are not very well utilized for large fleets of ships.

[x4000]

     Battling for galactic supremacy is old news - I think each ship should run in its own thread so they can fight over system resources instead.

Am I the only one that found this hilarious? 

No, I meant to post on that, also.   Quite hilarious indeed!  Given thread limitations, perhaps we need a separate process for many of them, no?  That could lead to even more exciting possibilities with AI ships representing themselves as files in the filesystem, and moving around and attacking and destroying one another in folders, and... getting embroiled in a battle to the death with your antivirus programs, etc.

[keith.lamothe]

One of my favorite PC games of all time was "Inner Space", basically asteroids-with-meta-game but the "levels" were folders on your file system and your mission in each was to pick up the icons (files), though you had to destroy them if they had been infected by a virus.

It was really cool, persistent relations with various other ships flying around, police that would enforce various laws (on others or on you), a few dozen different weapons including a lightning-gun-of-death... and this was Windows 3.1 or so

[XRsyst]

One of my favorite PC games of all time was "Inner Space", basically asteroids-with-meta-game but the "levels" were folders on your file system and your mission in each was to pick up the icons (files), though you had to destroy them if they had been infected by a virus.

It was really cool, persistent relations with various other ships flying around, police that would enforce various laws (on others or on you), a few dozen different weapons including a lightning-gun-of-death... and this was Windows 3.1 or so

Dude!  You remember that game too?  Even my other gaming friends didn't play that.  That game was a ton of fun.