Hello!
Thx for the amazing game, engine, and mechanics. Very cool game, very solid foundations, having a lot of fun. I mainly played with the Vasari for now, in hard/unfair difficulty FFA from 4-6 players. No MP.

So, in my last run I tried some kind of dark fleet run, that is of course the item that calls a local dark fleet. The main complaint that I have is that it really feels underwhelming. Of course, there is the spamming potential, being an item, and you do get it early in the game. However, tbh the units are so low tier, that it kind of feels a waste of time, resources, and prolly worst of all, an item slot. Do note that being able to spam it through several item slots also means losing those slots in many planets. The opportunity cost in either resources, research speed and so forth is significat.

If this feeling is acknowledged by the community and developers (i.e. not a skill issue) then possible fixes:
* Let the fleets leave the planet to join the main fleet. If necessary let the ability consume supply in order to do so.
* The last game upgrade is kind of a joke. a 120 supply of tier 1 ships is less than what you get with the summon fleet of some minor factions. What would be REALLY cool, though kind of a big change, and provided the dark fleet can join the main fleet, is to have a more developed dark fleet branch in the tech tree. That is, let it have 3-5 upgrades which could be very expensive as to basically consider an entire build around that. That would be cool.
* In some form, a more varied roster is a must. Specially of more advanced tier ships at least in the endgame (could the tier be base on empire level?)

* Another option, which I personally don't like but is doable I guess, is to simply have the fleet for a fixed amount of time... in any case the fleet being able to leave the gravity well is a must, at least for exodus (the starbase can do it!). Could that time be increased via research?

* Talking about exodus, is it possible to mount the dark fleet item on a ship? It should no?

 * Finally do note that though maybe u guys were worried about spamming, abuse of the skill and the meta, in its current state the dark fleet is only a source of XP to the adversary. Maybe it can provide some protection in the very early game, but that's it.

I like the high cooldown time, and not explicitly choosing the roaster of the incoming fleetas to keep the grind and micromanagement to minimum. In summary, keep or even increase the overall cost but double down on the reword you get.
Well, here's my 2 cents on this matter in particular.
Thanks for the high value game,
Have a great week and regards!