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All my ship's weapons have range 18.  The heavy weapons that are designed to destroy other ships have Starship Exclusive and other weapon traits.  The secondary weapons have no weapon traits, and are able be used to shoot down fighters, strikers, etc and can also shoot at other ships.  (The idea of having short range AA weapons to shoot down these is kinda silly IMHO).  All the Strikers I use on my DDGs have speed 15.  I don't use fighters because I think they are Not really cost effective, especially against a fleet like mine or the ones my nephew & friends play in south Florida.
Cheers

The first few ships I made included some range 6 AA guns, but I agree that that is really too close to be really effective,  I've been using range 12 because I can still save a little space for heavy offensive weapons.  I have to say as well that I swear by the anti-fighter trait, I always put it on my AA guns because I think it's worth the extra space for that +1 to hit.
I haven't had a chance to use seekers or strikers yet, but I was really impressed with how powerful fighters were.  I already have a missile cruiser set up for my next game and I'll be interested to see how well it works.

I agree.  All of the weapons on my ships hit on a 2+.  I do this to make sure that any ship that gets into range 18 recieves a heavy bombardment...  Also, It allows heavy AA fire at long range.  I think that Anti-fighter batteries are semi-useless.  We use mostly strikers and AFBs have No Effect against them.
Here is one of my heavier Dreadnoughts:

USS California  (606)

Hull: 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1           
Engines: 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1           
Shields: 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1           
Weapons: 1:X 2:X 3:Y 4:Y 5: 6:

X: "14 Inch Photon Cannon"  6/12/18, 1/2+/1/4
; Piercing +2; Starship-exclusive
[ABCD][ABCD][CDEF][CDEF]

Y: "5 Inch Laser Cannon"  6/12/18, 1/2+/1/1
[ABCD][HIJK][HIJK][CDEF]

Special: Hyperdrive; Armor Plating; Marines (6); Teleporters (3) [/b]

That's a pretty reasonable conclusion.  Any highly-specialized force has a counter, while a match between a specialized force and a generalist force could go either way depending on circumstance, luck, and tactics.  However, there are some specialist fleets that are very hard to beat with a generalist force, notably fleets using only very long range weapons in the AB or G arcs who sit back and destroy you in detail before you can engage (there was a thread discussing these a while ago).  There were a number of specialist fleets proposed as counters, but metagame solutions like restricting maximum range are also viable (and perhaps more fun) options.

Well, it's been a while since my last post but I have managed to play a few games here and there.  I just played a 1500pt game the other night with my friend.  I have been refining my fleet steadily and found a design for a cloaking torpedo destroyer that worked VERY well (I'll put it up in the admiralty basin under Prototypes).  It worked so well in fact that I became enamored with it and designed the rest of my fleet as a sort of destroyer delivery device.  I absolutely crushed by buddy with them last time and felt unreasonably confidant this last time around, but darnit, he went and adapted to it and slaughtered me.  He had 3 or 4 ships with multiple damage-3 continuing damage weapons and completely gutted my fleet in the first two turns.  I had a size 12 cruiser and he inflicted 23 points of damage in one shot with them.  That's just not right. 
Needless to say I am in the midst of rethinking my design philosophy.  Bottom line, less reliance on one tactic, I need to make sure that every part of my fleet is a threat in it's own right, and not just a damage sink to distract the opponent from my real winners. 
as always, I would love to hear what everyone else thinks.
http://www.mj12games.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=2462

Happy Gaming

Well, the thing is, the only time you need to emphasize speed over firepower and protection is if you are playing an "escape" type scenario.  Otherwise, it all comes down to trading fire at the end, so why bother filling up 1/3 of your ship with engines that won't help you once the beams and missiles start flying. 

Of course, that is only for regular Starmada games, if you are attaching a campaign game of some kind then there might very well be a reason to make a fast ship over a heavily-armed one.  Because then you can complete objectives beyond the destruction of the enemy.  But in a pitched battle where the only way to win is to destroy the enemy, it is better to be slow and nasty because at one point it will be a stand-up fight.

Re: speed vs. firepower:  I've seen something similar to what y'all're talking about using my BFG-converted Eldar fleet (against both converted Imperial and Chaos) - they're fast as all get out, but it does them very little good.  Haven't had them win one yet.  Might need to rethink their tactics - we've been playing them using fairly standard 'close and shoot' procedures, but maybe maintaining range would work better (except that per strict conversion, they have short-ranged weapons almost exclusively...  maintain range and use bomber saturation?).

Re: high speed and [CDEF]: one problematic build that you hear about on the boards sometimes is the high-speed ship with range 30 [EF] or [L] weapons.  Never seen them in action, though.

It's the limited arc weapons that seem to encourage good engines. If a ship can stay out of the primary weapon arcs of a ship, then it can defeat even a superior foe.

Perhaps it all has to do with the setup. The standard hex map is only 22 hexes wide. Even if two fleets set up in opposite corners (not likely if one fleet is built for close-in fighting) battles tend to start at less than 25 hexes range and can get very close very fast. After that it can pay to have enough thrust to get behind the enemey and stay there.

Again, I should emphasize that I've played less than a dozen battle so far and have only used ships from Klingon Armada. So set me straight if I'm just talking nonsense!

Umm...  just went and re-read the Eldar rules, not seeing anything about regeneration.  I think Necrons have something like that, but Eldar definitely don't.  I've been of the opinion for a while that the problem the Eldar are having with Starmada is the lack of a second movement phase - they rely on hit-and-run in BFG, implemented with a "move, shoot, change heading, move again" rule that applies only to them.  Holofields also didn't convert well - Countermeasures don't quite cut it.  Might end up stacking CM and Stealth.

I've been thinking about trying larger maps...  the software I use (GameTable) supports infinite maps, so maybe I'll see how that affects play.

Having had time to consider this subject, I conclude that with the permission of the other players in your games, you could restore to your Eldar ships their characteristic movement pattern. You would have to provide Engines for both movement turns and you would have to pick one axis of the playing field along which you would only be permitted to travel at half speed (or to put it another way, paying twice the normal movement cost).

It seems that one should multiply the Defense Rating by 2 (for the double movement) less 1/3 (for the third of the playing field on which you would move only at half speed) or, rounding up, *1.7. The effect on the Offensive Rating is more difficult to calculate, but would probably average out to a similar quantity. While the proper way to calculate the Offensive Rating (and find the true Combat Rating for an Eldar ship) would be to calculate the Offensive Rating at half speed, calculate the Offensive Rating at twice speed (doubling this to represent travel along two axes of a hexagonal map), and taking the average by dividing by 3, I feel that for a House Rules game this complexity could be neglected and that multiplying the Combat Rating( as determined from the unmodified DRAT & ORAT) by 1.7 would suffice.

However, given that all ships are counted as inflicting Damage simultaneously in Starmada, being able to make an additional movement after firing would not reduce the Damage inflicted on your ships.Though it would return some of the flavor that these ships had in BFG, it would not help Nomad's problem with them. I regret that I am not able to be of more help to him.

Well said - one of the reasons my group never actually played BFG (the other being the cost outlay).  Also one of the reasons we keep playing D&D ("Well now, that's a pretty trick you pulled off of the Character Optimization Boards, Mr. Munchkin.  No, of course I'm not going to take it away from you.  Being the DM, however, I will use it against you in ways that you could not possibly foresee, to the distinct detriment of your character.  Consider yourself warned."  Repeat until they learn...).  At the risk of sounding tautological, the purpose of my BFG conversions was to convert the fleets to Starmada (a system I enjoy playing and making stuff up for), not to turn Starmada into BFG.  Thus, a 'close enough for government work' solution seems to me close enough - it's more a question of "do they feel like Eldar" than "do they mimic the Eldar's capabilities in BFG."  (not to say that when a nice, easy direct conversion comes along I won't take it, but when it doesn't I'm not one to shoehorn the system).  As a result, I'm thinking I'm going to go with Cloaking for the 'hard to pin down' and 'surprise!' factors within the Starmada framework.

But I digress.

Also, Re: Time Limits (JohnRobert mentioned them tangentially): my group hasn't actually ever used turn limits.  We play to Last Ship Floating rather than for VP.  We tried playing for VP once or twice, but we found that it kind of skewed the results - sure, you might've gotten my carrier, but you overextended to do it and now I'm set up to annihilate all of your ships next turn.  How is this a win for you?