Thanks for taking the high road, Julin. I appreciate your level headedness.
Let me explain the fighter problem.
The Pirate S-AM is armed with:
3x Ph2 FH, 1x PhoF FH 1shot, 1x DroVI ALL 2shots.
If you have just 12 of them, here is what they would do to a ship at range 3.99 in one pass excluding drones:
36 Phaser 2's @ 3.5 Average damage at range 3.99 = 126
12 Photons @ 4 damage @ with 67% hit = 32
So that is 158 points at range 3.99 average damage with 12 fighters. Too uber. You dont want to know what they can do at range 1. And with 36 Ph2's you have an effective range of 15.99 doing average of 15-25 points of damage per turn.