Played a game with the boys tonight, their first time with Starmada.  It was originally going to be myself and my oldest, Michael (13), but my second son, Zachary (10), came down and wanted in on the action.  It was going to be a straight up KA game, Michael with CA and 2 FF myself with a C8.  With Zachary, I didn't have any more KA ship cards printed so he ended up using the basic sample ships (the Victory heavy cruiser and its equivalent battleship).   We also used D.1 (basic movement) to help keep things simple for them.

It was a very close game.  Zachary took out Michaels CA and a FF in the first two rounds destroying more than half the total point value.  The kid had incredibly lucky dice.  I danced out of range for the first three turns taking pot shots with disruptors and in the final two turns launched drones and charged the BB.  The first wave knocked the BB's shield down to 4 which was just enough for me to hurt it good in turn 4 (and get the shields even lower) and the second wave took it to just 3 Hull which was taken care of during the shooting phase.  Unfortunately he knocked out my FP shield and maneuvered his CA to take advantage of it in turn 5 (ok, so I coached him on that one a little bit).  If I hadn't achieved the victory conditions he would've taken me out.  I had but one hull point left.  One more odd damage die for him that turn and it would've been a tie.

Next time I mix KA ships with "regular" Starmada ships I'm going to use the standard faceted shields rule rather than the KA version.  The only reason I didn't go out much earlier was because the C8 has a rather large (comparatively) hull rating.  That BB with 5 shields was a tough nut to crack.  It took two full waves of drones to get the shields down and I got lucky with one of the waves.  I will say, that with those "Proton Missiles", the sample ships can be nasty buggers.