So, I've not got much to say about Delayed Fire; it's an interesting concept, but I don't think I would use it because damage now is better than damage later.  Precision, though, I have some thoughts on.  x1.1 is definitely too low; using Directed Damage allows you to boost your expected number of hull hits from 1 per 2 damage dice to 3 per 4 damage dice by re-rolling all damage dice which are not hull hits ( 1/2 initial hull + 1/2 not-hull  * 1/2 of not-hulls turned into hulls = 3/4), for a multiplier of 1.5 (.75 / .5).  Against armor plating, the expected number of hull hits increases from 1 per 3 damage dice to 5 per 9 damage dice ( 1/3 + 2/3 * 1/3 = 5/9 ), for a multiplier of 1.6666 (.5555 / .3333), which for traits would round up to 1.7.  These numbers speak nothing of the versatility which directed damage generates as well for crippling a particular system, just of raw hull-damage power, which seems to be how most trait multipliers are determined.  Therefore, I would recommend an x1.5 multiplier for Precision, and just let it be an efficient counter to Armor Plating.

Because if you don't, the enemy will.  Or more accurately, the enemy will regardless of whether you do or not, so it's kind of advisable if you want to win (because winning is fun, and losing is distinctly less fun).  And yeah, it'd be nice to play fair / light / non-cheesed...  but I'll be damned if I can convince the people I play with to do it.  And so the minmaxing goes on, until the game ends (like it's kinda doing now...).

But yeah, CAP-dogfight fighter interceptors are definitely the counter to use (as opposed to striker / seeker interceptors who can't dogfight and thereby guarantee detonation / destruction next turn).  The trouble with those is that they're self-countering; if you know the enemy's bringing interceptors to dogfight, all you have to do is bring about the same number (for the same cost), try to dogfight them before they get your missiles, and then you're back where you started...  it's just a point-tax on both sides.  But it's the only reliably effective counter we ever found against striker saturation (besides also using striker saturation and hoping you're the last one standing when the dust settles); Point Defense wasn't enough, upgrading AFBs so they could fire reactively barely helped, interceptor strikers or seekers weren't enough, long-range AF weapons sometimes worked but not nearly as reliably, shields have been right out of the question since the Halves / Ignores traits were released...

Hypothesis confirmed - a friend and I had Arcturans and our opponents had Imperial, and by the end of Turn 5, we had 500 of 600 required VP but nothing able to go take the last 100 from the enemy (everything down to engines 2, and all of our slow-firing stuff having already fired), who could sit out at range 15 and gradually whittle us away with lightning turrets.  Our fighters did a number on 'em, but only lasted one turn against the huge volume of close defense cannons.  Our armor plating was helpful, in that it saved our ships from destruction, but left us crippled in midfield instead of destroyed...  not much better.  And yeah, CM + FC was brutal at long range, and at mid-range they could've used Directed Damage if they had remembered, which would've further circumvented our armor plating...

We had to tweak our campaign system around it; we just charged econ points for hull that had been repaired during battle, and if it couldn't be paid, then the regenerated hull points degenerated after battle.  It required a little more book-keeping, since we had to track how many points of hull had been regenerated on each ship, but it worked out.

I know some tournaments have been run at various Cons, but I don't know what rules were employed.  MadSeason also ran a PBEM tournament a couple years back with pregen'd ships, but I don't remember how it turned out.  There was also a good thread a looong time ago with some well-thought-out tournament rules.

Personally, if I were to run a tournament, I'd probably pregenerate a couple fleets of Things Which Are Not Broken and let players choose from them.  If you do go with the "build and bring" approach, I'd probably disallow Ammo, Starship Exclusive, Range > 15, Acc 2+ (which lets Repeating go super-efficient very reliably), all the shield-breaking traits from Rules Annex (Ignores, Halves, P+2, and P+3), and Flotillas - those're the options that my group has opted to disallow.  They recently banned strikers (but not seekers) as well, but I'm not sure that prohibition will remain in place for very long.  I'd also remove Stealth, though my group has not yet voted to do so.

Yah, regen only repairs hull.  We weren't playing with Damage Control, though, and by the time he went "Uhh...  can we use damage control?" a number of my vessels would've needed to have used it on previous turns, and we didn't want to retcon.  We're bad at toggling options that need to be in effect from the beginning of the game, and we generally don't use damage control because it's kind of annoying / random enough that it can be either really useless or really frustrating.  I guess we'd rather see Damage Control as a starship trait than having it be a universal combat option.  Might have to hack that together...

But yeah, regen without Damage Control seems rather weak; it may keep you alive, but you'll be out of systems unless all that hull damage came from something like EHD or Cata, or any other effect that inflicts many hull hits without the corresponding number of systems hits (normally 2 systems hits per hull hit on average; with EHD, expectation is 2/3 of a system hit per hull hit, and with Cata it's 4/7 of a system hit per hull hit).  So it's a specialized counter-trait for those kinds of damage sources and not generally worth using otherwise without Damage Control.  I ended up using Directed Fire to cripple his engines and weapons rather than going for hull because I simply didn't have the firepower to destroy it outright, but I could definitely render it useless.

My group's recently banned ammo, ranges over 18, and engines over 15, but the core of the system is solid; it's only when you start getting out into 'degenerate' player-designed ships that things start to get ugly.  And yeah, there's been some debate over AFBs...  I don't think we've found a good solution yet.  I've switched to Point Defense for my anti-fighter needs, since it really helps keep the strikers / seekers off.

Hey, so we did test this on Saturday (bleeding into Sunday morning).  It was a pretty decisive win for Defense, around 1000 VP to 150, but offense made a couple of serious mistakes - they split their forces into three directions, decided not to pre-deploy some their fighters (not sure what they were after with that...  but nothing better than taking out a fully-loaded carrier before it can launch), and generally did not play optimally.  Granted, the defense wasn't perfect, either - there was a poorly-deployed minefield, a couple instances of serious overkill, and two flights of interceptors that never engaged.  I think if they'd pre-deployed their fighters, they probably could've swarmed the defenses (which were lacking in the AF department, especially on the side the undeployed carrier was on) and won. 

Somewhat different detail and a number of other reports at http://wanderinggamist.blogspot.com/

Hmm...  I guess my first thought is one of balance, and my second is of realism.  What we've noticed since we started using terrain is that having something to hide behind really helps shift the advantage away from the long-range G-arc only fleets that people complain about here sometimes.  If you make it so that cover can be destroyed, then the advantage goes back to them, which seems an undesirable outcome, especially given that the best / most prevalent form of cover in our games (asteroids) is easily destroyed in a single turn of shooting (use the +1 ACC to offset Directed Damage, and the fraction of hull hits goes up to 5/9 rather than 1/3, and then you only need to deal about 10 combined impact / damage to a shields 0 target, which is not hard). 

The realism issue is one of scale - one of my opponent fields Imp5 Dam4 weapons on almost all of his ships.  Under these rules, those weapons are capable of destroying moons and/or small planets in a single shot (even a planet-1 only takes about 18 points of directed damage to destroy, which is a single shot), and several of his ships firing in tandem could likewise destroy a Planet-2 in a single turn.  I feel like that's a bit much - I, for one, make a general policy of not fighting species who can trivially destroy my planets. 

I think I may borrow these rules, but if I do, I will likely increase the hull on the planets and astermoons sufficiently that attacking them with Catastrophic weapons is the only way to destroy them in Gamelength turns, or perhaps give them Damage Reduction of some sort (maybe that they reduce the number of hull hits inflicted per damage die that comes up Hull by 1 - then they're only damageable by EHD and Cata, which seems reasonable).  Or I might make Planet-Killer a special equipment with shortish range and a warm-up time (ie, only usable against static targets); I'm not sure having them operate on even the same rules as starships is a good solution, because it skews the scale.