I did make a change to my ships. tbl, as i noticed earlier that there were some really strange numbers in there -- most notably the Hippocrates and Nephilim. These two ships have ridiculously low values assigned for them. Many Shivan fighters also have very low numbers assigned. The Ravana's values are much lower than other destroyers.
Basically I made every fighter and bomber use (0, 300, 500, 1500), every freighter/CA/Cv use (0, 1200, 2400, 5500), Destroyers (0, 4500, 9000, 22000) and Juggernauts, Arcadia and Boadicea (0, 5000, 25000, 40000).
I figured that these changes would mean I would not again need look at the ugly LODs at a distance where it would matter. Nevertheless, distant ships would just use a few pollies, and thus my system wouldn't get overly clogged up. It seems to work well enough....
