My latest challenge, following the theme of unique ships. This one features 27 unique federation cruisers, backed by 14 squadrons of fighters. You have to have engines to get to the party, but otherwise there are no limits - it is a large map, with 100,000 credits to spend and 275 pilots to deploy.
Have fun, and please post back to tell me what you think. Also, I’d appreciate it if you respond with your winning fleets.
It was a very enjoyable fight… It only needs more anti missile protection especially anti EMP… 
Just wait until I get around to the swarm version. Mwahahahaha …
Thank you for the advice. Naking a challenging fleet wasn’t really my goal. I personally find spamming lots of tough cruisers (fast, with lots of cruiser lasers) and fighters for cover to be far harder to beat, but no fun at all. The first time I built a variety scenario, I thought it would be dead easy, but it turned out to be harder than I expected. This time, I went for gratuitous explosions and knowingly left some weaknesses. For example, cruisers are built as individuals, not to be team players. The result is squadrons that don’t fly at the same speed, missile cruisers with no leading pointer (they pack their own, halving their effective range) and so on.
So far, this scenario is getting high enjoyment ratings and mid-to-low difficulty ratings - exactly what I wanted.
Any advice on how I could make it more fun? Do I need better looking formations? More symmetry?
Nice challenge. Its very visually entertaining to battle against such a vast fleet with a number of different ship designs. It makes it less clear what weapon loadout you need to win.
My tactiic was a wave of EMP-toting cruisers, with light fighter screen support, followed up by a wave of mega heavy-plasma spam cruisers. Both ships used swarm smartbombs to protect against missiles.
My first wave was useless, got minced before they could really deliver enough EMP attacks, and I thought it would all be over then, as I watched your fighters tear them apart due to their totally absent armor (doh!). Then things changed for the better as it seemed that your ships got just close enough for my waves of plasma to do their thing.
Great fun to watch 
Thanks Cliff. I’m flattered your took the time to play and then post.