At last would I say.
Today, my friend and I played a 1500 fleet action game, using my own Star Trek oriented designs. I created those designs in order to make them sturdy whilst not too much to avoid having too lengthy battles, and simple enough to use them quickly.
In addition, I changed the movement rules that looks like a bit SFO. Before rolling for initiative, each player places a new order chit to each ship. There are four orders. All stop (no move but up to 180° turns), Turn hard ( up to 120° and able to move up to half thrust), Come about (up to 60° and moving between half thrust and thrust) and Full speed (no turns, moving between thrust and twice thrust). You can change speed as you like one turn to another, except that All Stop cannot follow or be followed by Full Speed.
The game was between Hydran and Andromedans. The Hydran fleet was made of one DN, 2 CA, 1 gunboat (aka pseudofighter) tender with its 6 gunboats, and one frigate. Gunboats are very fast, very easy to kill, but have one long range weapon. All other ships have potent short range weapons (Dfs and Cts ar range 9) and fighters simulated by seekers.
The Andromedans had a DN, BC, CA and DD. The were thus outnumbered by more than 2 to 1.
Their characteristics are that they are tech +1, regenerating (to simulate power absorbers), and with very powerful, medium ranged, weapons. Those weapons use many traits but do not display many attack dice (see below).
The board was displaying too asteroid fields on the Andys side,  and a small, blue planet in the middle.
During first turn, my biggest ships were moving straight ahead toward the Andys on the left side of the board, whilst the gunboat did the same on the right. The Andy ships were all on their right side of the board, closing.
During the second turn, the Andy are separating their smaller fleet (a mistake IMHO), the BC moving toward my ships, the remainder angling to move toward the gunboats, which opened fire first using their long range weaponry, damaging the DD.
The BC is close enough to trade shot with the hydran ships, damaging a CA but being damaged too. Regen kicks in and many damages are removed, but the DD is still in a bad shape, having lost a lot of thrust and weapons.
Hydran fighters are flushing out, and no less than 30 of them (with Cts) are targeting the BC).
Third turn, hydran ships are so close to the BC that they should kill it this turn. And they did it! One hydran CA is crippled and the fighters, being seekers, are voided. Gunboats are trying to avoid the main enemy fleet but lose one of them due to long range shooting, but they kill nonetheless the DD.
Last turn, the Andy fleet is in disarray but fight nonetheless. The last shooting sees one gunboat destroyed and another crippled, with a CA damaged. The Andy DN is crippled, a clear hydran victory.

Now, some comments from my friend who played a 'regular' (ie without any house rules as for orders above) game before but found that the movement rules were a bit too complicated hence my orders house rules.

1st comment: He liked those house rules, which added some tactical problems and are easier to handle than regular rules.

2nd comment: Shields, even 6+ ones, have a profound effect on weapons using Dx2/Dx3/Cts traits as it creates an all or nothing effect. Every hit negated by shield means a lot of damages avoided.
For example, a 14AD weapon will, in average, inflicts the same number of damage as a 1 AD Dx2 Cts weapon. I suppose all AD hit a 6+ shield. In average, the first weapon will see about 11 to 12 damages. The second one will inflicts usually 14 damages, but could inflict no more than 6 if one AD is blocked with a lucky shiield.
Hence the all or nothing effect.
The solution: Simply doubling, tripling or D6ing the hits before (and not after) blocking them by shields.

3rd comment: Alternating fire is a good thing, but the reactive player can lose a lot of firepower just because the active player killed or crippled a reactive ship first.
The solution: Resolve fire as 'simultaneous rounds', each round implying one ship (or more, depending of its fleet size. For example, if the active player shoots with one ship and the reactive shoots too with one ship, both ships fire simultaneously. We still have the active player choosing his shooting ship first, but the reactive ship can shoot even if its weapons are damaged or even if destroyed at the end of the shooting round.

Other than that, it was enjoyable although I wonder why my Andromedans had so little firepower for their CR in the end...
I will have to rework them.

Marc

Are mines removed when they attack?

Marc