I would be very carefully with crew qualities. Especially if these qualities are random generated (like the original idea of Dan). I dont think that this is a good solution. Faster than not and you have a "warhammery-effect" of powergaming in your battles.
First I dont think that heroes are a good choice for games like Starmada. Heroes belongs to myths and story telling or roleplaying games but not to good tactical wargame. But a different kind of beast are crew qualities. I think these could have some intereting twist in the game. A good example of this is the legendary great naval game Wooden Ships & Iron Men. There are crew qualities integrated in a very natural and convincing way.

For Starmada I could imagine that in default mode every ship is equipped with a standard crew. If you want to have a veteran or even elite crew you have to pay a multiplier of the final ship cost greater than 1. (eg. 1,25 for vets or 1,5 for elite)  If you want to have just a inexperienced crew, you pay a multiplier lesser than 1. (eg. 0,75 for green)

What a vet/elite crew is capable in comparision to the standard ship with 1.0 mulitplier should be play tested in balance. I am sure that this is a time intensive experience. Some suggestions could be: advantages in damage control, anti-boarding etc. I would not recommend to have a +1 to hit, a + to movement or other similar VERY strong effect. I would also not recommend (or play it myself) if there would be a real change of the basic rules because of crew quality (like I read it in a previous post) This would IMO imbalance the game to much and is an open invitation to powergaming. The advantages/disadvantages of other crew qualities than default "standard" should be balanced and not game changing.

I guess you dont give this marines-stuff a high importance in Starmada, at the moment (at least compared to the new detailed missile and fighter design) But it would be fine if we could see in the future more about troops in space.  I would love to see boarding and troop action as an attractive optional way instead of weapon fire in order to bring an enemy down. Boarding actions have much tradition in SF operas. 

Technically you are right if we look only at the starmada rules. Bases are ships without engines. But what is with the settings and their athmosphere? Eg. we have many special rules for fighters and missiles and satellites, (and they are excellent) even if not every setting in SF use such gear. So we can maybe say that fighter rules etc. are not really necessary for Starmada (fighters and sats can be probably recreated with small SU hulls or missiles could be made with the standard weapon design rules) but good for recreating the athmosphere of some great movies like SW or BSG. The same is with space bases. They can be titled as "hulls without engines". But does this approach hits exactly the athmosphere of SF operas which have great space bases like B5 or so?

Maybe its just me, but I think that the spinal mount was a special equipment piece.  It feels very "normal" in SAE. In previous editions spinal mounts could not be destroyed and the heavier the ship was the more range it had. I considered it more as "integrated" part of the ship design than the modern variant of SAE, where it is just another weapon. (although a big one) But of course I can live with it.

I never felt that we have too many dice rolls. For me the amount of different rolls feeled right. Maybe you can bring up in future source books some troops variants as optional rule. I mean we have several weapon parameters like range, IMP, ROF etc.. And we have maybe hundreds of different weapon designs. But we have just a single troop type in the game which has the same attributes and no luck involved. This feels strange, because in every other game mechanics there are always many choices and also an amount of dice rolls.

So why not having different troop types in order to portray the physcial/technological abilities of the different races? I even imagine that it could be fun to custom design troopers with traits like missiles or fighters.

I think what makes space bases interesting is that they could be used in different scenarios for victory points etc. To make it different a base could have more unique traits, which no mobile unit has. Eg. jump gates, extra layers of armor, space docks or planetary shield converters, biospheres or whatever phantastic equipment one can find in SF operas.
You did a similar thing with hyper jump engines, hopsital and cargo space etc. These things are mainly for chrome and the scenario design.
To introduce real differences between space bases and ships, the bases could have special equipment ships cannot have. Or maybe a base has a to-hit-bonus? Or you can integrate some equipment cheaper? Or maybe a station has always a bonus on RNG because its a more stable platform? I think there are several possiblities to make space bases very interesting.

So a begin would be to experiment and release different scenarios with bases in it. One problem could be in a standard engagement scenario where bases are not practical. But in scenario types where one is the defender and the other the attacker, they could be very nice.

The same is for planetary installations like PDBs or asteroid defenses or so. One of the uses could be a scenario where it is necessary to troop assault a central base which is protected by rings of defensive installations.
Planetary installations could have special features like a different SU table (because there is much less space restriction on a planetoid) It could have special equipment like stone or ice armor. It could have caverns with many opportunities to fight trooper vs. trooper.

In a planetary base rule system you could include environmental factors like dense athmosphere or vulcans or underwater which influences the tactic a spaceship has to use to fight against a planetary installation. Many new weapons and equipment is possible like planetary bombs and streamlined hulls.

So a full fledged planetary assault scenario could include:
-setting up a planet or an asteroid (maybe with random environmental tables)
-space superority units (for attacker and defender)
-planetary defense installations for the defender which are worth VPs
-stationary orbital combat platforms (for defender)
-landing units (for attacker)

Well one of the reasons I would love to have such rules for fixed bases, is to simulate another type of scenario like the raid on a complex of asteroid defense installations or the landing of ground troops on a planet.

I remember that the tabletop epic space marines back in the 90ties had rules for a scenario type called "assault". One player had the role of the defender and got 50% fewer buy points. But he could buy also defense bunkers, razor wire and fortified weapon platforms for his points and set them up in a clever way. Additionally he could place the victory points inside his defense position. The attacker got more troop points but it was not at all easy to crack the fortress to capture the vital victory points.

The equivalent in Starmada would be to have a network of defense measurements, like "energy webs" (to slow down ships), different mine field types, defense bases etc.

All in all I am looking forward to the new Starmada and I am sure it will be great. (with or without defense bases )

Well it seems that you have never used an apple under OSX like 90% of all the mac haters. Not me. I, like many other mac owners, use both platforms since several years for work. So I take your negative critique quite amusing because it is founded on the usual irrational prejudices about macs and not on knowlegde and experience. 

Ah the bubblefish syndrom. Now I understand. Its funny to have games with odd sounding german names in it - I remember mentioning the "Pfaffbeschleuniger" which resulted in a good lough at our local gaming group. But if you like I can take a look on your future german names and help you to have them sound good if necessary.

Sternmarine is from the german gramatics PoV not quite correct. Correct would be Sternenmarine. (with an "en" after stern). And even this sounds a little bit odd so a german/austrian would probably replace the word with other words like Weltraumflotte, or Raumflotte.

Ah good old Admiral Tegetthoff - my favorite national hero. My appartement in Vienna is located some hundred yards near the big 60 ft. Vienna Tegetthoff monument from 1886.

Thats very good. You can additional include a series of battle scenarios and a very simple basic campaign system (could be even simpler than sovereign stars) to each book. Then you name it Starmada Campaign Book 1: Arcturian Federations Cry for Freedom. (or so )

man, I loved these old ships. The Starmada Empire, The Kaladinese and the Arcturians. They seem to have disappeared. I am not so into the new races. like the French, Americans or Germans. I liked much more the original ones.

the basilisk looks like the missile tank in ogre. (sj games)

Really? Oh. well, then I have to use 1/2 damage or so lasers. thanks for the info.