Just one note about that; it makes carriers much more attractive targets in the early game before they get to launch everything, especially if you also play with Critical Damage from the Annex (Iron Stars originally, I think).  Had one game where an Eldar carrier had its flight decks crippled by a turn 1 nova cannon shot before it could launch anything, which pretty much won the battle for the opposing force.

I seriously looked into designing ships for Trav using Starmada back when I was playing Traveller d20 (since their starship construction rules were kind of bonkers), but was eventually deterred by the ridiculous range of sizes.  Starmada's space units only scale as hull^1.3, so to get a range of 100 tons to 1,000,000 tons, I was going to need hull sizes of up to 36, which I found unpalatable.  Likewise, the deadly nature of Starmada made the risk of mass-PC-death-by-vacuum-exposure a little too high for my group.

Never spoken to Cricket in person, but he does frequent the forums (a lot; it's nice to have designer input on rules questions).

As for learning curve, fast and easy.  About 20 pages of simple-to-grasp core rules, significant chunks of which are examples, and everything else is optional.

As for versatility, see previous point about lots of options.  Following up what madpax said, you can even build non-fleets with it; there's an OGRE conversion in the ship design forums, and I've also used it for BattleTech.

One tongue-in-cheeck note, though, is that your survey method (posting on the starmada forums) is likely to get you a biased sample...

Yeah, a lot of groups restrict maximum range especially.  I didn't even know there was an option for RoF 6...  but yeah, 2+ accuracy is a beast.

Part 1:

My understanding is that the balance between impact and damage is one of gambling against the enemy's shields.  If you're feeling lucky and like a big payoff, you skimp on IMP and put your SU in damage.  Then, when you hit, you have one shot to beat their shields, and if you make it, you really make it.  If you like reliability more than the thrill of winning big, you put your SU in IMP, and when you hit, you have a lot of chances to make it through shields, but they're each worth less.  Basically, the existence of DMG as a stat lets shipbuilders put more of their statistical eggs in one basket.  It's kinda like fire-linked, but later in the shooting phase.

Part 2:

Well...  I can tell you where it comes in in the formulas (in weapon SU cost, you multiply by (DMG+.6).  Thus, changing from DMG 1 to DMG 2 only increases weapon cost by a factor of 2.6/1.6 = 13/8 = 1.625).  Don't know why it is thus from a game design perspective; hopefully Cricket will chime in.  On the other hand, Double Damage does let you effectively exceed the cap of 5 IMP 5 DMG if you want to build a real superweapon, so it does have its uses.

That may help balance them.  Previously I was skeptical, as the external carrying rules seemed a bit broken, but quantifying explosion damage and restricting shield sharing may help.  On the other hand, it also seems a promising system for splitting ships into components; you could have a shield generator module, an engines module, and a couple of weapons modules on a base ship that is really just some hull and tender capacity.  This would also allow for versatile, 'hardpoint' style design.

This is probably because SW is extremely hero-centric, and capital ships are therefore relegated to set dressing and special effects platforms (whereas fighters are central because they can be operated individually).  This also leads me to conclude that Bekosh's MacroFighters are the best way to handle movie-like SW space combat (and also a really neat idea to start with).

Blacklancer: yeah, those look pretty reasonable.  I like the dual-mode on the X-Wings.  What references were you using?

I have a couple of issues with the proposal for EW Equipment as it currently stands:

[*] Defensive: This should probably inflict a -1 penalty to to-hit rolls made by the affected ship.  There exists no other effect in the game (that I know of) that outright raises to-hit values.  Additionally, inflicting a penalty means it can be countered by Fire Control.

[*] Offensive: Debatably balanced against Fire Control...  the ability to gain a +1 to hit with any and all weapons is much more powerful than negating a penalty (you could, for example, load up ships with 6+ weapons and then use Offensive Scouts to spot for them, doubling their accuracy.  You'd basically need to make EWEQ large and expensive enough that you could fill a battleship hull with 6+ weapons and an EWEQ, and have it be roughly as expensive as a battleship hull full of 5+ weapons).  The targeting limitation may balance it, but it worries me from a balance perspective.  I'd probably go with "Can give a friendly ship Fire Control" from a balance and simplicity perspective.

[*] Jamming: This just has some unclear rules involved, since the basis (Dust Cloud) is a full-map effect rather than a limited area.  If you're inside the jamming and fire at a target outside the jamming, does it count double?  Do you just double the hexes that were jammed that the shot passes through?  What happens if you shoot in one side and out the other?  Basically, edge cases (in both possible senses of the phrase).
Also, I could see this being useful for getting fighters into position if your opponent favors long-range anti-fighter weapons, or potentially for neutralizing enemy AFBs (depending on the ruling of effects of dust clouds on AFBs; I think by RAW it wouldn't effect them, since they effect targets in 'an adjacent hex', not 'at range 1') if you can get your jammers close enough (I see cheap low-hull, no weapons, high-engines ships with just an EWEQ and maybe Stealth or CM for this purpose - accelerate them up to fighter speeds and have them move in with a fighter wave to provide cover.  Buy and field them in bulk to make sure your fighters stay covered).

I think my biggest issues with it as a whole, though, are balance and Dan's "One Trait, One Effect" rule of thumb.  I would definitely split it into three components with separate functions and separate pricing, because as one monolithic component, it's 1) fantastically powerful (in part because it's really versatile, and in part because its functions are all strong) and 2) it's really complicated for just one thing.  Plus, the versatility would make it really, really hard to price (though anything that grants an ability to another ship is going to be impossible to price perfectly, unless you have its price be a function of the composition of the fleet that is fielding it, which is just a nightmare from a paperwork perspective).

I do like JR's notion of limited range on the scout abilities, though "Target Lock" is totally foreign (I don't have the KA/RA books, so if it's something in there, that would explain it).  Bonuses to finding Cloaked vessels make sense as well; that's probably one of the more elegant implementations of anti-cloak technology possible.

While we're at it, I'm going to throw out the notion of hyperdrive interdiction - when active, subtracts 2 (or some other constant, or (1d6 mod 3) plus 1, or ???) from the hyperdrive build-up pools of all ships within some number of hexes.  Probably a 5% SU, x1.15 or x1.2 (or so) ORAT ability.  Alternatively, you could buy hyperdrive interdiction nodes kind of like mine factors (at a flat cost per node).  Then, each node can be used during the shooting phase to make an 'attack' against a target with difficulty varying by range like Teleporters (maybe 1d6+2 or 2d6 vs. range to target).  A success reduces the target's hyperdrive pool by 1.  Or make them work just like mines that inflict hyperdrive pool damage to any target in the field during the end phase.  Kind of special purpose, and I don't see myself ever using it, but it does fit in some universes (I believe SW has hyperspace interdictors, for example).

Yeah, missiles as strikers vs. missiles as weapons is always tricky.  I used range 18 RoF 1 Acc 4+ Imp 1 Dam 1 Doubled Range Mods Slow Firing weapons as torpedoes in my Battlefleet Gothic conversion, and it worked really well.  It was way easier then keeping track of piles of strikers, ships using them were a lot cheaper than they had been with strikers, and they had much better sustained firepower since they didn't run out of torps.  On the other hand, if you make missiles into weapons, you can't block them without blocking everything else just as well (via Countermeasures or Stealth), which doesn't sound like what you really want.

From your weapon descriptions, here are the traits I would use for each:
Spinal Mass Accelerators: Minimum Range or Inverted Range Mods, Catastrophic, Ship-Exclusive (or the Spinal Mounts from the Shipyard / SX)
Disruptor Torps: Strikers with Piercing (+1 or +2), Bomber
Turreted Accelerators: Ship-Exclusive
GARDIANs: Ignores Shields, Anti-Fighter

Also, upon further consideration, I probably do not have the RL time to learn a new system and play another campaign since my True20 campaign is starting in a week and there are midterms between now and then...

Mainly I was throwing this out there for those who advocate using pre-emptive AFBs as a kind of compromise position between "AFBs are awesome and always get the first strike" and "AFBs are useless because they never get the first strike."  Not so much to start a debate over whether fighters are overpowered or not.

Not particularly familiar with Mass Effect, but I'll give these my best shot:

1) The size categories you typically see in Starmada (in the published supplements, at least) is that frigates and corvettes are down below 4-5 hull, light cruisers are in the 5-6 range, cruisers are 7-9, battlecruisers 10-11, battleships 12+, capping around 15 usually.  You could put dreadnoughts in the 14-15 range.  There's some debate as to whether it's more accurate to rate ship categories by CRAT, though (so anything above, say, 500 points might be a dreadnought, while 250-500 might be cruisers and below 250 frigates).  It's pretty arbitrary, and doesn't really have any rules effect.  Just assign what works.

2) You could use Anti-Fighter Batteries from ISS.  They sound similar to what you're describing (in terms of being able to effect both ships and fighters at close ranges).  The range on them might be a little too short for your liking; if that's the case, just build range 3 anti-fighter weapons for them.  You could also use the Point Defense special ability, possibly in combination with anti-fighter batteries.

3) Not sure what you mean here...  probably a more VBAM specific thing?  You could try PMing OldnGrey; I know he's done some conversion work on VBAM and 'mada compatibility.

4) Well...  you could just make it a G arc weapon with some impressive stats (and maybe slow-firing for flavor).  I believe the Shipyard (see the files subforum) also has an option for spinal-mount weapons, but it's not really in the rules as written for starmada (I think they're basically G arc weapons whose damage scales with hull size).  Likewise your heavy broadside guns; just lock it into C or D arcs and give it some nasty firepower.  Minimum range is also not bad for modeling guns with slow tracking that can't be brought to bear well on nearby targets.