hello all.  my gang and i played a game of starmada this weekend and some issues / questions came up.  i wanted to get your opinions.

first off, i really like S:AE.  i liked S:X and AE is an improvement and fun to play.  we had two new players, and a 14,000 point game, which we finished in 2 hours.  no way you could do that with most other games.

questions:
1. can weapons in the same battery fire at different targets?  example: X batt: 1 weapon is arc A, 1 is in arc B.  can each fire at a different target, or do all batteries fire at the same target?  i think that may have been from full thrust or something and the rules didn't seem explicit.

2. a 6 fighter squadron rolls 6 attack dice, correct?

3. a weapon with inverted range modifiers fires on a target with stealth, at medium range.  the range increment is increased to long, and the weapon is effectively treated as if firing at short range because of the inversion.  is this correct?

4. does regeneration affect hull slots that are "captured by marines"?  what about hull damage from hyperdrive malfunctions?

5. a ship's weapon damage track goes like this: [1=X] [2=Y] [3=Z] [4=_] [5=_] [6=_].  all the weapons in the "Y" and "Z" batteries are destroyed.  next, the ship takes 3 weapon hits.  the weapon damage rolls are "2, 3, 6".  since the X battery is the only remaining weapon, are all three of these rolls wasted?

general comments:
1. we played on a massive battlemat that was roughly 6x4 feet.  my opponent and i began several feet apart, and although his ships had severely limited forward firing arcs, i got crushed because he was able to keep me in his front arc due to the huge board size.  how big are most games?  do most people play on something more like a battletech mapsheet?

2. i was absolutely demolished in one game where my opponent routinely took ships with "5" strength shields and weapons that were all "piercing" and had large numbers of impact dice.  i couldn't damage my opponent and all of his hits shredded my ships.  my designs weren't silly or anything, it was just a tough combination to beat.  how do other players deal with this?

thx in advance.  attached is a picture of my fleet.  see below: