Fleets could have the following positions: Main Force, Escort and Picket. Assigning these to ships either manually or locked in positions based on hull would alter the way the ships work in the turn sequence and the targets they fire on. I think I'll need to illustrate with an example.



Main Force: Starts its cycle of turns on the third turn of the phase. Fires on anything. Battleships and Dreadnoughts would be locked into Main Force.



Escort: Starts its cycle of turns on the third turn of the phase. Fires specifically at ships targeting ships in the main force. Destroyers would be locked into Escort.



Pickets: Starts on the new first turn of the phase but will only target escorts unless their are no escorts left to target. Missiles would fire on turn 2 and hit on turn 6 for Picket ships. This helps give them a role in fleets instead of constant Laser spam.



This would allow larger ships to last longer against destroyers because their delay in firing and giving people the option to focus on them. Also due to most ships not firing for at least two turns of each phase will allow battles to last into later phases because less fire power is being thrown out each phase.



Edit: Missiles would still fire on turn 4 for non-Picket ships.

...interesting



I think it wouldn't help much with the laser-destroyer spam, though. It might cause a hybrid of corvette and laser-destroyers with the main fleet being ignored.



It also has the problem of not letting you fill out your fleet positions early in the game as you won't have cruisers, battleships or dreadnoughts.

Don't entirely agree on how you force certain ships into certain roles.



Once carriers hit the game, I'd use battleships to escort my carriers, personally.