@crazyredcoat – “As soon as a unit staying around gives it benefits you become a little more attached to it, in that sense, though the ‘overpowered pitfall’ is deff something to keep tabs on.”

This is very true.  Darkstar addresses this issue with a two-tier narrative upgrade system: Campaign Upgrades and Battle Upgrades.  Campaign upgrades are “off the table” upgrades, they do not effect the course of the game in any way.  Faster Darkstar waves for enhanced FTL travel, promotion in rank, upgraded command rating, reduced repair times, and so on – these things do not directly impact game play on the actual table … and so do not jack up the cost of your starship (s).

Battle upgrades do effect the table play, better shielding, better EW, gunnery accuracy, gunnery impact, thrust, initiative, and so on.  Each battle upgrade jacks up the your point cost by base cost x 20%.

So you have so you have destroyers like USS Oriskany or @damon ‘s HMS Sheffield that started at roughly 40 points, and now cost 130 poinst and 90 points respectively.  Yes, the Oriskany is badass, but she always has to fight triple her weight.  She’s the USS Enterprise of Darkstar, elite and prestigious, but always gets the toughest missions as a result (why is Enterprise always “the only ship in the sector?”).  Because of her point value, she’s also the prime target for opposing players in tabletop play.  HMS Sheffield is the same way, just double instead of triple.

Conversely, you have players like @rasmus who take campaign upgrades like promotion, command rating, and upgraded ship types, trading up from light cruiser to heavy cruiser and now a battleship/battlecruiser (with the extra promotions and training a commander needs for these new billets).  True, his individual ships don’t grow more expensive, he just trades in for bigger ships which are more expensive out of the shipyard (e.g., his new “battlecruiser” costs a full 282 points out of drydock).  But he had to promote to Captain, then Commodore, while also promoting to Task Force Command – command of certain warships types is illegal at certain ranks (no Lt. Commanders with their own battleship, for example).

This is a simplified view, the actual case between campaign and battle upgrades is almost always a blend between the two.

But we definitely allow players to chart their own career for their own captains and command crews, building a narrative legacy for their warships and crews as they see fit.

The point is, we definitely want our “narrative” system to make ships, battlegroups, task forces, and fleets more powerful, but have a robust system in place to track the point cost of these improvements to ensure players don’t “run away” with the “overpowered pitfall” you describe.