Move/Fire limitations in FT (was GenCon stuff)

Well, this is were I'll jump in I guess. I have also played a few big SFB
Fleet Battles (30+ ships per side, most cruiser or larger with some
escorts), and I can tell you that it was SLOW. but there are a lot of things
that contributed to it being so slow.
1) Energy Allocation - while not the slowest part of the turn, it does
take
a chunk of time - thankfully we don't have to futz with this in FT.
2) plotting movement - OK, so we used free movement, but in initially
planning movement people we scanning the movement charts to see what speeds
would give them the movement breaks they wanted based on their assumptions of
the enemy's speed, all the while counting hexes so they could be 'just
so'.  Real fiddly - FT movement plotting seems more straightforward.
3) With unplotted firing, repeated stare-downs after movement waiting
for
an arbitrary time limit to expire for announcing firing, 'me-too'
firing. 2 impulses of that crap led to written firing orders, but for the
impulse
only -but then you have other problems - if I scribble just a note
saying 'no firing', opponent writes a paragraph as if detailing lots of ships
firing, when it turns out to be just bogus but he couldn't let me know that.
Urg!

OK I'll stop with that - It's starting to give be painful flashbacks.
Anyway, largely as a result of that battle, I was trying to put together my
own set of rules to allow fleet battles. This was at the time I had FT, (no MT
of FB) and also a copy of Starmada 3.0. I liked a lot of the features. My
movement system was almost vanilla FT. The biggest changes I had to the
movement system were the addition of Overthrust, Overstress, and some special
Maneuvers (like Erratic Maneuvering). However, my combat system was a little
different and tried to address part of the restrictions
of Move/Fire without breaking down actions as far as SFB or Car Wars.

So here's the point: what do people think of the ideas below? What are the
biggest holes? do they make any sense?

** Multi-segment combat system **
Each ship was given firing orders - Early,Spread, or Delayed fire.
There
were two firing segments per turn - one at the movement midpoint (where
you make your second turn), the other at the end. Your firing orders did not
restrict your targets, but restricted the percentage of your weapons you could
fire in a given segment:

Orders 1st Segment 2nd Segment
Early      Any           Up to 1/4
Spread     up to 2/3     up to 2/3
Delayed    up to 1/4     Any

If you plotted delayed fire, in hopes to smash you opponent at a closer range,
only to find he accelerated more than you anticipated and closed the range in
the first movement segment, you would only be able to respond with a small
number of your weapons, and hope to God you live to the second phase to
retaliate with the rest. The only 2 restrictions were that each weapon could
only fire once per turn, and you could not plot Early fire immediately after
Delayed fire.

** Overthrust ** Overthrusting allowed you to used more thrust than your drive
was rated at, but with risks of damaging the drive (or blowing it up
completely.) The risk increased the more you pushed it past spec. A thrust 8
ship could
_probably_ get away with a point or two occasionally.

** Overstress ** Overstress was based on the assumption that a ship was
designed to withstand certain stresses, but it weakens as your superstructure
gets big holes punched through it. Even to the point that the force of your
own drives could cause damage, even snap your ship in two (not usually...).
Anyway, as a 'translation' back to FT, for each row of damage boxes remaining
(even it if is jut 1 point) the ship can safely withstand 2 thrust. As you
start to push it past that you risk taking damage. This damage is applied to
the hull (damage boxes) and can cause threshold checks as readily as any other
damage. So your thrust 6 cruiser gets pounded and is on it's last damage row.
Despite it's engines being undamaged, it is limping along at just thrust 2 to
prevent collapsing sections of its weakened structure.