The rulebook lists alot of rules as must be agreed upon by both players. mixing factions is one of them, so is squad building as well as using any cards not included in the game box. the rule book states we're limited to the quantity of tokens, dice, and cards included in the starter game box. I just do what our TO says the format is, bring my extra dice, and try to have fun with the special scenarios presented

I had NO problem with fielding the equivalent of 4 ships (one was the federation fighter squadron) with very few upgrades (3 captains, Kirk, Ryker, and Terrell) and ended up going 3-0. Went up against a force with 2 ships with lots of upgrades, another 2 ships with a lot of upgrades, and a 3 ship force with a moderate amount of upgrades.

Had a generic Nebula class, the original Enterprise, the Execelsior, and the fighters. Ran the Admiral Orders for the 10 extra points (we opted to run the admiral orders for OP6 since we ran it for the other months).

I don't think the ships are overcosted, I do think you need to have a good strategy and make sure you can maneuver well. Take advantage of the other ships weakness (i.e. the Dominion battleship that just came out pretty much goes in one direction really well, but if you can get behind it and can turn around and keep behind it, you're going to do fine).

At least on a tournament level, 100 is fine. At one point, you're going to either have a ton of ships and have maneuver issues or you're going to have a ton of upgrade cards that you can't use. On top of that, if I am running 200 points, knowing my opponent is probably going to have space issues, I would definitely run lots of mines out there and get tons of free attacks. Home games, it may be fun to do 200 points with a limit of # of ships, but at the tournament with a limited amount of time, not so much.

I'm playing star wars x-wing and have no problem with either 100, 150 or 200 pts build... it is perfectly balanced at all costs. Every single game element i can think of is balanced. I'm amazed at how this games rely more and "placement and use of the board" skill rather than pure "team building". Sure a good team building can help... but even trying to exploit the cards, customizations and the likes seems pointless as most of the game elements seems near-perfectly costed. I don't know for attack wing though.