What about creating race that would have grater number of weaker ships, with penalty to hull points, and with less weapons hardpoints, but also with modifier to cost, so they would be cheaper.
I could see a specialty fer them to have support system which would eliminate pilot needed for frigates, so it is possible to place more ships than there is pilot limit, but the ships have to be weak.
Also racial benefit could be some sort of booster that work based on number of ships in close proximity, probably bonus to accuracy (tracking)
Another good style for them could be suicide ships, basically weapon system, that would detonate the ship, if reaching set distance, and would do a damage depending on reactor (probably multiplied by some some degree).
In essence Fighters would be weak, standard speed, low power, low hit points, but cheap.
Frigates would be cheap, small, weak in hit points, with few weapons, but numerous, and some suicide attacking enemy ships.
Cruisers would be more for support than direct attack, acting like mothership (boosting frigates in it’s vicinity / formation / escort)
nice one this would be.
i think that there crusier weapons should be crew intensive, so the big guns = cost lots, high damage, crew needed
while every thing else = low-medium damage, cheap, no crew
it would be nice seeing some little suicide drones coverd with fancy lights going into some big fleet, so the Drones have a couple of “Mother” ships that have the big long ranged firepower while the rest of the fleet is in numbers and looks very small.
they could have very bad armor (fighters can be killed in one shot from a standard Crusier Defence Laser)
and on a differnt note, could GBS be made into a defnece game, where you build a base and try to stop the other guys killing all of you base?
this would be an interesting idea, i would love it if there fighters also had the suicide module so that they could basically be big, flying, armored bombs…that would be awesome.
i would really like to have a race like this, swarms of cheap ships would be awesomely fun 
the suicide fighter squadrons could be used as a sheild on big ships, say $5 Per Fighter + $10 For suicide Mod X 16 X 4 = Anti-Ship Sheild and Bullet Magnect