Currently, ship combat at low levels works decently enough. However, ship combat at higher levels often is a matter of first salvo wipeout. Whomever gets the first shot, basically wins. The damage values at higher levels way outpace defense and HP/SP values. If that’s the intention, then I suppose that’s the intention. On the other hand, if space combat being a game of one-shotting isn’t the intention, then I think the higher level damage values should be curved somewhat.
I won’t say I have all of the numbers available but I understand it uses a similar formula to ground combat. The issue is, unlike ground combat, defense values and HP/SP do not scale appropriately.
Proposed solution would therefore be to reduce the attack values of higher level ships and weapons, and module boosters, or to appropriately increase the HP/SP values inherent to higher level ships. I’m not sure how ship to ship attack and defense values are calculated either, but it is something that could be addressed as well. Ships don’t have the same equipment based defense that characters do either, so there’s another factor.
Finally, while it’s easy to stack damage boosters, defense/DR is only available in enhancements to the ship itself. And the damage boosters provide a significant offense boost. Which also contributes to the ‘1-hit salvo’ meta currently present.