I had a Seltorian - Neo-Tholian battle myself yesterday. Seltorian CA and CL vs Neo-Tholian CA and CL. I had never played Selts before - I have ship cards for them in FC, but I never used them. Their particle cannons pack quite a punch! You want to fire them at close range, however, to get a decent chance to hit. The good news is that close range is up to 5 hexes.
The Selt CL went down first due to concentrated fire from both of the Neo-Tholian ships. The Neo CL then lost all of its engines, and died soon afterwards. After that, it was CA vs CA. Both had downed forward shields. By turn 7, the Neo had taken a lot of internals - it was down to about 1/3 of its weapons and only had 4 hull boxes left. My Selt still had all its weapons and still had 7 or 8 hull boxes. I decided to risk a head-on alpha strike and let the Neo take its best shot. We came at each other and fired everything we could bring to bear at close range. I took some hits, but the Neo went boom. All in all, a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon!