I know in casual games we can play any points we want, but like in X-Wing its nice to have some agreed standards in place. If you use every ship and squadron in the core plus the commander, it doesn't leave many points for upgrades (unless you drop a squadron or 2, but with so few ships it loses the "armada" feel even more).

I think 200 allows for some more interesting builds, allowing all models to be used plus a few upgrades and/or unique squadrons. Or maybe 190 to force tighter builds. What do you guys think about this?

Not certain without my core set, but this seems to go down the same path as most of our other "I'd prefer x to be y" ideas here from the forum. You are free to do whatever you want with your set, and you've already said that this is for casual games, but for those of us planning on attending tournaments it's just going to throw off our groove I think it is more important that you establish these sorts of standards among your playing group than us sometimes contentious forum goers. If you're looking for validation that sounds good, but I think I'll be sticking to either 180 point builds or 300 in preparation for tournament builds for at least the time being, will probably start mixing things up more by the time wave 2 comes, out likely by the end this year.

I know in casual games we can play any points we want, but like in X-Wing its nice to have some agreed standards in place. If you use every ship and squadron in the core plus the commander, it doesn't leave many points for upgrades (unless you drop a squadron or 2, but with so few ships it loses the "armada" feel even more).

I think 200 allows for some more interesting builds, allowing all models to be used plus a few upgrades and/or unique squadrons. Or maybe 190 to force tighter builds. What do you guys think about this?

I think that's the point of 180-point core battles. You can choose to go 'all ships', or you can leave some of them home, and add some upgrades.

for those of us planning on attending tournaments it's just going to throw off our groove

Ah good point, I hadn't considered that. However, I played a 200 point game earlier (first "proper" game after LtP ones) and it worked really well. There was still difficult choices to make with the inevitable 1 or 2 points over the limit, so have to drop something.

On a side note, going from LtP to a full game adds so much more to the experience - more tactics and loads more fun