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Questions:

I've seen various guides for starting armada, but they are all confusing as hell
-there's like 6 fleets in the guide(s)
-there's 8 fleets on the website at starter fleets
-the fleet identification tool has like 12 fleets some of which are more than one race it looks like
-there's like 20 fleets on warstore.com store some with virtually no options

whats the deal with all these seemingly extra fleets? are they mercenaries or what? are any of them a good idea?

2. Is getting extra starter fleets for your fleet a decent way of expanding? or are they generally a one off thing.
3. whats the general ratio to small ships/larger ships/dreads? what are common point values for games?
4. I've heard fighters are bad(?)

Starter fleets "Tend" to be a one off, there is no starter with all good choices, especially the larges as they have several Mk versions available.

There is close to something like 20ish fleets now, however if i recall only about 7 are "Core". The others are more like alliance fleets that can be self contained or mixed into the core fleets for some mix and match.

Ratio should really be at least 2 of each size of small medium and large, if only to cover your back for objectives. Some like to lean more in one direction that the other though (Also If i recall its rare to see mroe than 2 medium units as they cost alot of points).

Common points values are 500,750, 1000 and 1250.

Fighters are....there. A good addition if you have 10 points spare or so, but they're bad "now" because they scrapped whatever originality they had which was good and hamfisted the DW fighter rules into it, which as it turns out while they were amazing for DW, weren't a good fit for FS:A

is it in the rules or somewhere who can take mercenary ships or anything because i'm not seeing it

 Grundz wrote:
is it in the rules or somewhere who can take mercenary ships or anything because i'm not seeing it

For that you will need the campaign expansion, "Mauraders of the Rift" if i recall. Ontop of fluff and scenarios, it gives expansion rules and unit stats.