On the subject of beam weapons, missiles and fire-controls.
I would perhaps agree that beam fire-controls could perhaps be reduced in size somewhat, that would perhaps be beneficial to to the balance. Although not cheaper, but smaller.
One thing that somehow bothers me is how we calculate the probability of hitting something with beam-weapons. One thing that is an apparent issue for beam weapons is range. In my opinion the size of the object MUST be as important as the range. An object that is half the size of another object is pretty much the same thing as hitting the larger object at twice the distance. This is a two dimensional thing and has more or less nothing to do with speed. This would obviously also make fighters/FAC more of a valid platform for beam combat, which could be a welcome change for those that like to use fighters for that. Realy large ships should be pretty much sitting ducks for close range beam weapons.
My suggestion would be that you hit ships at 5000t (100TC) at 100% accuracy and you then just add % based chance increase to hit based on that.
Missiles should of course be handled with special types of fire-controls built for that purpose only. These should be expensive but smaller than regular fire-controls with much less range. I don't think we should be able to shoot down missiles at the same distances we can shoot down enemy ships. Area-defence weapons should work differently ans distances should be reduced and we should not have to choose between Final-fire or Area-fire for our PD weapons. They should automatically fire at final-fire and/or area-fire. Only allow weapons that can fire every 5-sec and be turreted to be assigned to PD fire-controls, thus limiting those weapons to PD duty. It would also lift the restriction of differentiate between final-fire and are-fire PD.
Let the velocity of Gauss-weapons effect their accuracy instead of their range. They should have effective ranges below 10000km anyway, lasers should be the weapon of choice to provide are-fire protection. Make area-fire lasers actually more accurate and effective then final-fire gauss cannons so you will need both. If are-fire laser weapons were more accurate you would need to separate your laser escort to provide that protection, but keeping a few CIWS or gauss turrets would still be useful.
Add some small collateral damage on missile impact on ships in the same space. Such as a small chance for each impact to damage another ship in the are if only a small portion of the damage. Just make this a random chance and a random amount of damage. This would also serve to make a choice of close escorts and/or several battle groups. Some mechanic for ships that are within close distance from each other (say 50000km) to synchronise their attacks as a compensation.
If you would consider any of these changes it would perhaps be good with a formation/task-group editor and be able to divide a task-group into squadrons.
Ok, enough stupid ideas from me for today...