I use simple counters made out of black foam core.  A ship silouhette in white ink, center dot of metallic marker color, and then colored pencil inside the silouhette itself.  For when I was gaming with kids at the youth center before it ran out of funding and closed.

Save my mini's for cons and games at home.

Hobby Lobby/Michael's/Craft Stores all have these cool 1.5" disks which you can get 1.5" avery stickers for.

That's what I use for fighters as they can be easily stacked.

A natural extension would be to use it for capital ships too!

Counters do have a few advantages, they do not cause the floorboards to sag under the weight, take up a lot less room when it comes to storage and can be of any ship that can be photographed or drawn.

If the counter is  say 500x500 pixels it can be printed at any size you please with fairly good results.
Printed onto "scratchproof" photo paper, stuck onto 2mil card and Magnetic sheet stuck on the bottom.

A "magnetic whiteboard" can be placed on the wall for a table. Or at a pinch, the fridge!

Now as soon as those UFO Interceptors clear the parrot and Father Christmas, they will blow the backside off of that klingon cruiser!

But you know, I have to say, those Brigade figs look pretty darn cool.
Once I get my 2 copies of Satrmada X: Brigade in the mail, I might just take a closer look at building a fleet using figs after all. Browsing through the Brigade site, I was surprised that the prices were not as high as I feared...

Actually, I would love to get a few counters that are actual size....... I scratch build my own figs....... but the only commercial ones that I have were created by Studio Bergstrom, and while awesome, tend to run a touch small. I am kind of looking for something to give me an idea of what scales people use, so that I can work accordingly.... I am also going to be ordering some Fleet Action scale ships soon, and maybe some other stuff...... however, outside of ordering online, I am limited, as there are no local game stores in my area..... and again, some of those pics don't give me an idea of scale.

John