Player colonies with lots of items and ships getting conqered is extremely unbalanced.

[Mike276849]

When one of your colonies gets invaded and captured, all of the items you had stored, all of the ships you stored, they are not directly stolen and lost forever/sold in the military ship market, they are instead treated as "items stored in temporary storage for a monthly fee" which means that you now have 200 000 monthly credits fee in my case, which causes you to lose all of your money no matter how hard you try, and eventually you pile on debt, which is technically makes your save file unplayable from there. The enemy colony is surrounded with enemy ships so you can't safely evacuate your items or your ships at all

Change the colony invasion mechanic to cause your items to be directly stolen, and not charge a monthly fee.
Maybe add a campaign creation option in the campaign selection menu at the start of the playthrough. This can also mean that if you found a bar contact that sells nanoforge production slots / black market production then your stashed items there are also permanently lost, which makes sense from a realism stand point.

[Histidine91]

That's unfortunate! However, I strongly expect that any kind of permanent loss would be far, far more irritating to players than the current behavior, even if it's more realistic.

Current best solution I can think of is a temporary exemption on storage fees, so the player has time to work out a plan to get their items out (or at least to wait for the invasion fleets to return home)

[Mike276849]

That's unfortunate! However, I strongly expect that any kind of permanent loss would be far, far more irritating to players than the current behavior, even if it's more realistic.

Current best solution I can think of is a temporary exemption on storage fees, so the player has time to work out a plan to get their items out (or at least to wait for the invasion fleets to return home)

Well, to retrieve the large amounts of valuable items if your idea is implemented, the player would need a fleet of stealth large cargo space ships like 5 Revenant-class Phase Tender ships, and use them to silently infiltrate the conquered enemy planet surrounded by military war fleets defending it while the "temporary exemption of storage fees" is still in effect.

So I like your idea in general, and I think the campaign creation menu should have an option to choose - the current behavior or "temporary exemption of storage fees" or "everything on that planet in storage gets stolen by the faction and is up for sale on the normal/black market"