just looking at some things in the movement calculations and I realized that a ship that has a single habitat and no other systems aside from engines will never exceed 16 movement, as that's the point where thrust= max possible speed. Such a ship will never be able to do anything else because by the time a single mass scoop, hold, and drone rack are added (the minimum requirement to do anything other than move about) that speed drops to 15.

Presuming that the intent is(/seems to be) for combat to be mobile and fluid, why not use a progressive formulae akin to that used for drone stats; ie, instead of a flat increase in size/decrease in speed make the number of systems per decrease in maximum speed lower per system added. This, of course, brings into question what the function would be, requiring consideration of what the maximum and ideal speeds should be, and what the maximum number of systems would ideally be...
ie; most of the ship design rules.

When thinking about ship speeds, you need to factor in drone speeds & burn rate to establish their effectiveness.

I strongly suspect that's backwards;
you need to take ship speeds into consideration when establishing the burn rate and effectiveness of drones.

more to the point;
a drone reaches 12-15 move rather quickly, or 8-10 for attack drones (4-6 points each, or 2 drone racks mostly focused on this). Conversely, the fastest ship that can reliably take any action aside from moving can only reach a 13-14 speed, with appropriate engines not doing anything else (size 21-25 systems, at least 13-14 of which are engines).
more directly; 2 drone racks cancel 10 systems. there is no choice which to reduces this, being smaller limits movement just as much as becoming larger.

Spindizzies create the strategic moves to escape a combat, but choosing when is important due to the charge time.

I think this is working really well.

I suppose I'm still banging around looking for a reason to use small ships. There is definitely an optimal size, though I tend to prefer larger, slower ships for their obvious benefits in ability to do more. I guess I'm still looking for a justification to wonder out of the "optimal zone" in the other direction...

I love the flexibility and the novelty in the ship building rules, the ability to design and create virtually anything a player can dream up (with compromises- as any engeneer must). I just always have to push that last edge of "What's in that direction," and play advocate for that one more option... even if it will never be +as+ optimal as playing the mid-range there should be some reason that its viable for the one wierd player who wants to run that edge. bah.

+chuckling+ give ships an "evasion chance" against incoming drones equal to (ship size)/(max ship size {76})?
meh. done now.

I've never seen an evasion chance trigger, so i'm not sure thats working to be honest.

Your ships speed determines how close you can get to an enemy ship and still out-run the drone they fire at you. The speed of drones is relatively static really, most people use 10 or 12.

I try to stay just outside that radius, but when I make a mistake I've got 6 charged dizzies standing by. I'm finding that I don't really need those though, so i'm probably going to switch em to more guns.