Yeah, looking at it, the majority of my CVL's tonnage comes from the PD system, because I anticipate using them against Precursors, so I tailored both them and the PD cruisers to countering the typically 100+ volleys of AMM in offensive mode, which it looks like you may have trouble with, unless you're using massive numbers of those DEs. That forced me to cram in absurd amounts of drives and fuel, to allow their escorts to operate at full efficiency. And TBH, the 1-thick armor belt and 20 shields on those cruisers makes me shudder; they look like they'll go down very quickly under sustained fire, and the range you accepted on the ASM to get WH9 and 40kps velocity wil force you to get well inside enemy ASM range. Admittedly, you can probably swamp Precursors with sheer numbers, but if you run into an NPR with a decent military (particularly if you had one spawn at start), you might have trouble, as they tend to build much heavier ships with longer ranges as their primary missile platforms. That said, your ships will be much more efficient once you've got the armor and shield tech to let them take hits without drastically increasing tonnage than my monsters will, but in the early game, a crude approach tends to (in my experience) result in fewer losses.
One thing I would suggest, though: Split the roles of the Warrior class into two missile combatants. If you go with dedicated ASM and AMM cruisers, you'll be able to field much heavier volleys or thicker armor for each.
Regarding my own ships, I suspect that they'll actually get smaller as I develop the tech to fit the same functionality into less volume.
It was a while since i last played Aurora, so i decided to give it another try... But i'm getting a bunch of error pop ups as soon as i press the time buttons. It may be related to the fact of having a NPR, from what i quickly gathered on the aurora forums.
I tried starting a new game with different settings but with still one NPR (i don't really see the challenge without one), but i got the same problem.
Is it always like that or am i unlucky ?
I tried to start several new games with the latest patch as well, and each of them generated errors with practically every action. It may be because of an issue with the new patch, so you might want to try the previous version.