ok, some valid points. but I wonder, what good are pure numbers? the information of 100 ships is far less useful than a modified version of, say, 100 basic frigate equivalents. if that means 100 basic frigates, 30 or 40 heavy cruisers, a bunch of carriers or whatever is also important, but secondary. and for what other reason than a quick estimation are those blips good?

cluttering could become and issue, but in a way it already is, when fleets do get very large. if there were more like ranges for blips, like one blip indicating 1 - 3 basic frigs or 1 heavy frigs or carrier or 1 - 2 long range ships/ support ships ... something along those lines. and capships could start out with a few and gain one every other level or so. it does not have to be hyper detailed and exact, but I'd like it, if they showed more quality instead of pure quantity.

This is my exact response.  Acquiring the information you want doesn't require completely re-doing the HUD or coming up with some arbitrary number like 3 light frigs are a blip, but 2 heavy frigs are a slightly larger blip.

Although, forums arguments about why someone's favorite ship blip isn't big enough could be pretty fun.  "You know what?  F-you!  Teh Cielo deserves a much bigger blip than those POS "carriers".  I hope you burn in hell."

Re-doing blip sizes or whatnot will make reading plain numbers much faster than looking at the blips. Seeing "Javelis x100" is much better and faster than "medium blips"

Sorry, but I see absolutely no logic in your suggestion. If you need a quick side estimate, you look at the blips. If you need a quick strength estimate, you hover over the blips. Comparing numbers is much more intuitive than comparing blip sizes. What the hell is "I have 3 large blips to his 5 large, but I have 10 medium blips and he only has 5" supposed to tell you? It's a poor comparison in and of itself, because a heavy cruiser isn't always scarier than a bomber squad. That's why you look at the exact numbers. I can have no heavies and the enemy can have 30, but I can still take them out with all my bombers.

Or how would you even distinguish between fighters and bombers? Or light frigates and long range frigates? They're the same size, so it'd have to be the same size blip.. but 50x fighter is quite different from 50x bomber, and 100x cobalt is different from 100x javelis..

It's the only way to make it universally easy to understand. If you start using multiples for one ship/structure, you open a can of worms. An un-upgraded starbase is no more threatening than a couple of gauss cannons, but the same isn't true for an 8/8 base. Same with a level 1 capital vs a level 10. So the easiest is to just leave the blips as a quick "number of crap in system" gauge, rather than "try to guess the relative strength of crap in system" gauge