I actually agree with this philosophy.  Yesterday, I played a 1500 point game here in Jacksonville.  I had a CR450 BB, a CR251 CL, four CR151 DDs, and a couple of CR110 FFs.  My friend had a CR750 ship, two CR350 ships and three CR24 ships.  It was a fun, brutal slugfest, but I won.
:arrow: BTW, I will be in S.Fla. for a week and we are playing Starmada at Gaming Glenn's excellent gaming store Dragon's Lair in Davie on Tuesday @ 1pm.   8-)

My friends & I here in Jacksonville have all given "Fragile Systems" to all of our ships.  There are several reasons we do this.
First, it makes the ship less expensive so it can have more hull and armor and hull delaying the threshold checks.
Second, it takes the guess-work out of making the damage/crippled rolls.  Too many times I have rolled a 1 or 2 and figured if I am gona loose two boxes too often, might as well have "Fragile Systems"...
Third, it makes the damage & crippled checks simple:  just mark off two boxes!

IT works for us; we are very competitive, but have much fun with the game. 8-)
Cheers,
Steven
Jacksonville, Fla.

In one of the novels written in the STARFIRE Universe, by David Webber, there was a race of aliens that had special ships equipped with a ram that rammed enemy ships causing double the damage, and then troops boarded the rammed ships.  They also had missile/boarding pods with good range.  The designers of STARFIRE later published a suppliment with these ships & the ramms.  8-) 
Whopps, gotta go; it is c7am and I need to head off to work (Public School Teacher here)
Cheers
Steven Gilchrist

Here is the latest version, with a different form on "Heavy Torpedoes"
It has more hull and its CV is eighty more than the previous version.  But it also has a little more firepower... 8-)

FOUR-LARGE-TURRET-class Dreadnoughts (620)
46ARMOR (= 31 AblativeArmor)
61HULL (I think of it as 30.5 Reinforced Hull from the Starmada Compendium)
THRUST [5][4][3][2][1]  WEAPONS [_][1][2][3][4]
      ECM [_][_][_][_][_]    SHIELDS [_][_][_][_][_]
Fragile Systems; Overthrusters
       WEAPONS (traits)                     [ARCS]                    RANGE;     ATTACK DICE
4× Plasma Cannon (Acr/Dx3/Gid) [FX4][FX4][AX4][AX4] 6-12-18;  4 3 2 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
10× Chain Guns (Acr/Dfs/Rpt) [TT]     2-4-6;     10 7 5 3 2 2 1 1 1 0 0 0
10× Heavy Torpedoes (Acr/Cts/Sct) [CD]    2-4-6;  10 7 5 3 2 2 1 1 1 0 0 0

     I will let everyone know how it works.

I noticed that there seemed to be no SU cost for "Escort" a couple of months ago when I added it to a three hull PT Boat I had made.  It merely added to the cost.  I have never used this ship tho.  I don't have any ships that I want to keep hidden; all my ships have good firepower... 8-)

My friends and I are playing Starmada, here in Jacksonville, at Suncoast Comics near NAS Jax on Roosevelt Blvd. 
All are welcome. 8-)   
We will continue our restriction allowing only two weapons traits on weapons, with Acr & Prc not counting in that number.  Also, although we don't use Expendables, Seekers are allowed...

Hello everyone from Jacksonville,
My friends and I played two games of Starmada today using the Two Weapon-Trait limit, (Acr & Prc don't count against this limit).  The games were fine and lasted a little longer, and were less brutal than before. 
Some of the weapon combos we had on our ships included {Dx2+Dx3, Slow+Cts, Dx3+Cts, Tls+Dx3, Dfs+Rpt}.  All of these weapons also had Acr, and none had Prc because no one here used shields.  In fact, all of our ships have Fragile Systems.  One of my friends has Long Range Sensors on all of his ships, I have Overthrusters on all of mine, and another friend uses neither.   
I think we have made things unbroken, and made the game more fun to play. 8-)

I believe that the seekers attack right after their target fires.  This is to give it a chance to do some "AA" fire at the attacking seekers.  If the target of seekers has been destroyed or cloaks, then the seekers having no target just go away; vanish (they go inert?)  If the target is weaponless, then I would guess that the seekers can attack it whenever the owning player of the target declares that it has completed its firing. 
A delema can develope up for the player of the seekers' target.  If he or she has first fire and fires the targeted ship first, then other friendly ships that are nearby don't get to fire their weapons at the seekers attacking that other ship.  This can force a player to change the order that his ships fire...

Sounds good.  Not sure if my gaming buddies will go for it tho. 
Another solution is to manuever more carefully.  I usually play one c500 point DN and some destroyers.  On turns when my friend moves and fires first, I will move the DN last, and keep it out of the narrow arc of destruction of my friend's attack-ships.  In fact, I can move it into a position where it can fire its range 18 weapons and pick off these smaller attack-ships.  This could work too...

We ploayed one game of Starmada using Expendable Weapons:  We quickly decided that they were too powerful for their low cost.  I think the cost multiplier of .2 is too cheap, .5 would be more reasonable, considering the design my friend brought.  Here it is:

Shadow Zone BREAKER class
CR=130, Hull=10, Armor=0, Thrust=9, no shields, no ECM, stealth, etc.
Here was it's only weapon; a brutal expendable weapon:
Death Matrix
Arc=FR, Range=6, it has {Acr,Cts,Dx2,Dx3,Exp,Sct},  Attack Dice 16-11-8-6...

My friend kept this ship just out of range 18, which is the maximum range we limite ship-weapons too.  Then the turn he won innitiative, he overloaded the engines of this ship and charged to range two of my largest Four-turret DN.  This DN has 31 Ablative Armor & 46 Hull, with a cost of 515.  He fired and vaporized this larger DN
I Calculate that at short range this Breaker class ship should, on the average, do 33x21=681 points of damage.  If he had split his fire, he could have Destroyed all ships on my side with one shot. :!:
Have I miss calculated? 
This quickly led us to rapidly agree that expendibles are broken, Very Broken.  No disrespect to the S:NE designers, but I think y'all underestimated the potential power of the Exp Weapon Trait.
Have other players used the Exp W.T.?   How did it turn out?
We are playing S:NE this afternoon w/o the Exp W.T.