Balancing systems for ships like x-wing

I'm not trying to limit myself to space games. I'm certainly open to learning from any system or game that's available. I just want to know what's already out there that is spaceship related since I'm developing a spaceship type game. That way I can avoid creating something too similar to something else out there. There are so many games out there, I thought it would be better to put my feelers out there to other gamers/developers that know more than I do. That being said I will definitely check out all the games suggested. Thanks for all the input.

To answer your questions X3M here are some of the basics of the game.

I've already gone through several versions of the game.
Right now it is based on a 20 point system
The board is 14 hexes by 12 hexes
Movement cost 2
Attack cost 1
Shield Cost 1
Defense dice are fixed based on movement and shield levels
So if a ship has 6 movement and 4 shields it would have 12 defense dice.
You would get 6 defense dice for movement plus 6 to shields to equal 10 on shields to get 12 defense.If that makes any sense. Basically adding the difference on shields to equal 10. I did this because before with so few defense dice AND having to roll sixes to evade a hit made it seem pointless to roll defense dice at all.

I did have it set up where there were only 3 types of ships. the 20 point system has changed this a bit for a variety of combinations between movement,attack,shields and defense dice.

This is the old system
Light -7 movement 2 attack dice 4 shields 6 defense dice
Medium- 5 movement 4 attack dice 6 shields 4 defense dice
Heavy- 3 movement 6 attack dice 8 shields 2 defense dice
Just as a generic reference for types of ships

As of now there are just different ships with different abilities instead of strictly light,med and heavy ships.

With new 20 point system I've only playtested a few times. Once with 4 players. 2 teams of 4 ships each side. So 8 ships total with fairly inexperienced gamers. The game lasted 60 minutes. All iterations of the game have been under an hour, which I want.The first scenerio was 6 on 6 ships which usually lasted about 45 minutes.

In the latest version attack works like this:
If your ship is attacking any of the 4 sides of an enemy ship you need a 4 and above for a hit. Attacking face to face you need sixes. And attacking from the rear you need 2 and above for a hit.

Defending, you need to roll sixes to evade a hit.

So the problem is that based on the 20 point system, after mapping out all potential combinations of ships, some ships can be destroyed before they ever get a shot off, which I really dont like.

Potentially you could have this scenerio

A ship with
3 movement/ 12 attack dice/ 2 shields/ 11 defense dice goes up against
7 movement/ 4 attack dice/ 2 shields/ 15 defense dice

or

7 movement/ 4 attack dice/ 2 shields/ 15 defense dice ship defends against

5 movement/ 2 attack ship. Virtually impossible to get a hit on the 7 movement ship.

This might be fixed by simply employing a rule in an elimination game where if you destroy half your opponents fleet the game is over. It might not be an issue with different scenerios. I dont know. Only playtesting will tell that.

In any case, yes, it is a lot of work trying to find the right balance.