IMO it's an issue of short hand notation. It is easier to have an arc designation of ABC and be clear as to what arcs are intended vs PFFSF.

There's a couple good ones if you like big stompy mecha and neat ships.

VanDread - Boy meets Girl add transforming space craft and human harvesting bad guys. Did I mention boys and girls lived on different worlds...

StrAIn - Armored fighter/robots used as fighters in a nasty war...brother vs sister and the discovery of a dark secret.

Argentosama- Again cool fighter/robots used to fight giant adaptive alien robots that try to converge on a single point on the planet. Why is the big thing...

Record: Lodoss War- if you like something more D&Dish.

Rune Soldier - Fantasy camp/humor series...possesses some amusing moments.

Iria - adult level violence and such. BAD alien vs young bounty hunter wanna be out to avenge her brother...this one is considered a classic among anime.

Gasaraki - A mix of modern day and feudal japan mysticism centered around a boy and a girl on opposite sides of corporations developing Tactical Armors...but beware those who are pulling the puppet's strings...

Dunno, but Zandris did those up about some months ago. (long enough that I've forgotten exactly when)  Was sort of surprised myself at how similar things were. Guess the game has ready made mini's ironically.

Nomad is correct on question 4. 

If your opponent is taking level 5 shields, then designing weapons to ignore shields or halve them, coupled with to hit 3+ paired with fire control is the next logical step if you're doing the one-up game. Honestly, the best answer is to set some design criteria/limits before hand to ensure that the lopsided build is reduced to more managable levels for enjoyable encounters. It's not all that fun getting your hat handed to you by a maxed fleet... 

Priceless  8-)

I've posted what little information I have on the subject without, I hope, sounding like I was making any committments for anyone. But to answer your question, the game is not dead. At least not to my knowledge.

You're not going to get straight over conversions. It's merely going to be a matter of getting as close as you can. Difficulty may vary.

Now THAT's gettin creative. I love it!

Paul...I need to share a couple things with you that may help you out.

Gotta admit those look pretty snazzy. Problem is that the color palette for the tank and the counter are too similar, so the tank started to get lost IMO. Not that it doesn't look nice. It's merely an issue of clarity.

Yeah...that's probably the way to go, though only those that print out the pdf on their own are going to get the benefit of color unless the hardcopy is printed in such.