@Young:
With the Alpha setup additions, perticularly AA guns, the amount of gray chips have also become an issue.
This is why it is important to save all your old sets! You can cannabilize them for pieces!
Another option for chips are to go get those miniture poker/roulette sets, they usually come with Red, White and Blue chips (I would not go with more than 3 colors, personally) and add them in for more chips. The Classic game never had enough either! So I have lots of extra chips floating around.
Some naval insignia works great to replace the cardboard naval bases - shiney metal, what’s to dislike? ABs I have some metal infinity symbols I got from a student once, there’s like 30 of them, but I have no idea where they came from. Sideways they look a little like a propeller, so that works fine there.
Your TB issues may have to be solved differently.