Yes, on both points.  The little missile frigates don't have a mounting pad, so I had to drill directly into the hull and use the wire.  Holds pretty good so far, and easy repair if anything happens.

Hopefully this will work, just a preview:

<IMG src="http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/tkeith9512/Space%20Ships/1ATheFleet.jpg"></IMG>

<IMG src="http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/tkeith9512/Space%20Ships/ContractorMissileDestroyer1.jpg"></IMG>

<IMG src="http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/tkeith9512/Space%20Ships/MercenaryAssaultFrigate1.jpg"></IMG>

<IMG src="http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/tkeith9512/Space%20Ships/NegotiatorHeavyDestroyer2.jpg"></IMG>

<IMG src="http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/tkeith9512/Space%20Ships/ThugMissileFrigate3.jpg"></IMG>

Great that you got your little one in on the game.  My middle daughter was all into games until she turned 12.  Now, it's my 3 year old boy.  He helps move ships, and completely enjoys moving the asteroids.  True random movement!

For smaller missles, a la rocket size, I generally use the standard battery design rules.  For larger ordinance, such as torpedo to ICBM size, I use seekers.

It depends a lot on your given background or flavor of the universe in which you're playing.  For example, some Anime missiles fire in big packs much like a flight of seekers, but they're susceptible to intercept fire from point defense systems.  In other Anime shows, those very same missiles are simply too smart/small/agile to be shot down.  Thus, in Starmada, you could model them effectively either way.

I think, in many ways, we often tend to design weapons and/or ships to power game in the larger metagame, and forget the joys that come from using a set of limitations by common agreement to model a particular universe or story.  This is especially true when designing ships/weapons for open gaming or ships to go against official published designs. 

Conversions from one system to another are particularly prone to this.  We tend to design the LARGEST ships to fit our perceptions and desired weapons load out instead of finding the smallest and most efficient design that captures the flavor of the original design or miniature used.  This represents more of a focus on cause instead of effect.  The ORAT, DRAT, and CRAT all help address balance, but sometimes it seems like a ship with a 200 rating is measureabley more effective than two ships of 100 each.

One of the cool ways that I've seen to address this type of thing during an open design campaign is to use resource points of some sort, keep track of different marks of ships, and design and deploy upgraded/updated/refitted ships so that the players can respond to each other's different strategies, just like historically happens!

Incidently, I agree on the H&C flavor text.  I have just assumed that each fleet has a 'subsystem name' for any given type of beam weapon, much like we do in modern weaponry by assigning a system name.  Sidewinder, sparrow, RAM, TOW, Patriot and Javelin are all modern missile examples.

I use, mostly, Ninja Magic base adapters.  All of my ships pretty much fit (off of the bases) in Sabol foam trays of various sizes.  Once you have enough bases converted, they're universal, and you can buy adapters for additional ships in packs of 8.  Not the most economical, overall, but I've found them to be MUCH more secure and less pain in the butt overall to convert ships because there's much more surface area to either crazy glue, epoxy, or glue-and-pin, as necessary.  Unlike every other method I've used (and since 1985 I've tried them all), the NM adapters are the only ones that don't break ships and don't break bases.

For uber small minis, like corvette class through most destroyer class, I bought a ton of small rare earth magnets from ebay for less than $5 with shipping and glue one to the mini and another to the flight base with epoxy (make sure you orient the magnet the right way, and the SAME way for all of your ships.  Ask me how I know!).  Paint the magnet and/or adapter black to blend with the stand, and once on the table, it disappears.

I have plastic stands with Ninja Magic adapters, plastic stands for small ships, and the GZG metal stands with Ninja Magic adapters for large/heavy/unbalanced ships.  They'll all fit in a properly prepared 2 inch foam tray.

I spent a LOT of time through the years drilling ships to fit flight base stems, fixing broken stems and drilling the broken pieces OUT of the ships, and ruining ships converting to jewelery barrel connecters.

The heart of all of this is the Sabol foam tray or equavilent.  Lets you store everything flat, or in the case of the bases standing up where they're most stable.  If you don't want one of the Sabol carriers, here's what I did=take a foam tray to Wal Mart and go back to the sporting goods department.  Somewhere back there, especially in spring and summer, will be a soft sided cooler that will hold8-12 inches of foam trays for less than half of what you would pay for one that says SABOL on the side!

If you're very astute, you can get one that will hold a three ring binder of rules and have a pocket for dice and tape measures and pens, too!