I also started in 2015 and have seen the same progression. You would see a couple people drop 100k each in on a map from time to time but now its almost every map with multiple people spending hundreds of thousands. It would be nice to be able to play out a skill match from time to time.
SO I just lost part of my fleet because I had them on aggressive. They kept attacking the land base even though I gave them attack orders to hit the enemy fleet. So the other guy just picked off my ships one by one before I figured out what the issue was.