Star Trek Attack Wing is a big game with a decade of releases.
This tends to be the weight most competitive games struggle to handle. STAW also has a few other layers of complications, but these can be used to help balance the game, indeed, the designers may have intended this the whole time.
The designers of STAW seemed to me to be creating a game that requires timeline and faction specific alignment to make sense of their designs, which are then hijacked and used in a true mix-n-match by the tournament circuit. That is to say, the ships they design are in balance if played to cannon, but the balance is thrown out when timelines and factions are mixed.
One of the game elements that STAW has over X-Wing is their ship Captains are separate from their ships. When abused (i.e. in competition), this makes for some really weird combinations, but when kept “pure” it adds needed variety in sometimes small fleets.
Then we come to relative ship strengths.
For tournament players, many lesser ships (i.e. from the older periods) were stripped of their cards then sat unused or were only added as cannon fodder or fillers in unlikely fleets.
Weak ships in AW are a relative thing and to their credit, the designers did balance ships within their own periods.
If you use these ships only against their contemporaries, their abilities are well themed and balance out properly. The only issue is some fleets are thin to say the least.
The Gorn are a scary proposition in a TOS fight with stats of 3-1-3-4 (highest Shields in TOS) and some funky upgrades, but drop them into a TNG game and they die quickly, unable to match even a Ferenghi Marauder. Right horse on the right course.
By separating my ships into faction and timeline pure fleets, I have achieved a form of unbalanced-balance that suits just fine. Kirk as captain of a Borg cube with crew drawn from across the galaxy and through time might be a powerful option, but not on my watch! Everything feels right, it fits and makes sense.
No more weak vs strong ship anomalies, such as the Vulcan D’Kyr ships from the Enterprise era having better stats the a D’Deridex in TNG!
This Enterprise from the Kelvin set is a monster, so a favourite of some tournament players, but totally unbalances the game unless kept in its patch. I have toyed with the idea of using one as the a USS Vengeance style ship for an “Into Darkness” style scenario, it is genuinely that much bigger than the Enterprise in the other image above with stats of 4-1-6-3 and speed 6!
This has also allowed me to re-purpose the many repeat cards you accumulate for more bespoke options. If you take a ship ability or name from one era and shift it to another, the game is not (has never been) so finely balanced that this causes problems, it just adds options and you avoid repeats.
This is only really possible thanks to pure timelines.
My TOS set for example includes the Federation Enterprise, Intrepid and Dauntless, the Gorn Gornarus, Go’Sorass and Gress’Sril, the Klingon have a spanking new K’Tinga flagship Kronos One (as yet without cloaking), Gr’oth and Somraw D-7’s, Romulan Gal Gath’Thong, Praetus, Vorta Vor, Kazara BOP and D-7 Algeron. Six of those ships are recent “home made” add-ons, can you tell which?
Play how you will, but I for one see real benefits in sticking to the factions and periods that are canon, in fact I really struggle to move away from them. I do choose to, the matchups are genuinely “Trek” in their weirdness, like Xindi meeting later Federation or Borg, Sp8472 and Tholians popping up all around, as they did, the Gorn in later or earlier periods.
Scenarios I do intend to play are;
The Borg going back to pre-federation Terran with a Tac Cube taking on the whole Earth and Andorian or Vulcan fleet (my Vulcan fleet is massive).
The rebellious Vulcans attacking Andoria and Earth.
Tholians vs Terran, the nimble NX vs Tholians look fun.
Sp8472 vs Dominion.
Sp8472 vs Terrans and co.
Borg vs TOM period Feds.
Borg vs Dominion.
The Kelvin Enterprise in the Terran period (truer to scale).
Gorn vs Terrans. The Gorn are tough and resilient.
Bajorans or Marquis going into the Delta Quadrant in numbers vs Kazons (or the reverse)
Hirogens vs Borg (likely)