I've been playing regularly now for about 4 months, and my skill has graduated from hopelessly punching at things in the dark to having a plan that sometimes comes together.

Man, for other newbs, one of the most discouraging things for me was trying to figure out my own preferred play style while building dumb lists or doing dumb things and losing quickly. That's the norm, I would say.

When I started to realize that I like the safety of shields, and I prefer 4 or more ships, I started to be able to develop an understanding of matchups.

Two things I still see others do that seem beyond my skill set.

The first, and tangentially related is using fewer ships (3 smalls, for example). In giving up shots and actions and block opportunities and hit points (usually), the room for error is minimal and I've not done well with 35-45 point ships. I wish I had the skill to run Rexler Brath and one other ship, and I've tried, and my ability to win seems very different than my 4 and 5 ship lists.

But more recently, I'm seeing people use large ships in 2 and 3 ship lists, and I just don't get how lists with only two attacks wins. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I see it happen. I'm not playing against those guys or those lists (randomly). And when I've added anything but the Decimator or Dash to a list, (and often when I do add them) I lose actions by being blocked or simply clumsy with the difference in spacial reasoning. Last night I tried 2 Firesprays in a friendly game (against 2 punishers and a bomber) and I almost kinda got powned between Redline missiles and Deathrain bombs. (Boba Fett had the good sense to "accidentally" fly off the board after Kath went down on the far side of the map. My opponent got lucky on some evade rolls, and had done the insane thing of putting autho-thrusters on a Punisher, which paid off twice, and with only 2 attacks against rather beefy opponent ships, my Firesprays were effectively hunted by those other clumsy ships.

Poetic license aside (sorry), I want to add a large ship to my skill set, building on what I have now, which is a sort of generalist idea how to play 4-ship versatility lists.

I'm a better Empire player than a Rebel player, and I don't own S&V ships (I borrowed some yesterday for the experiment on 2x Firesprays).

Where does one start in list-building with a large as a newb, and managing a 2 or 3 ship list?

I have in mind a Doom Shuttle (24pt) a generic Defender, and a somewhat 'fat' named Defender

Thanks in advance for the shared knowledge and assistance.