Armada was designed, and sold to the public, as a game about large ships fighting each other. Squadrons weren't a big sell, or a big push - FFG has X-Wing for that. More of a "side action" to the main business of large ships shooting at each other again and again. If a squadron or few did happed to attack and deal damage to a ship, great, if not, no big deal. I remember podcasts talking about only taking 4 TIE Fighters as a starfighter screen, and being effective at it.
Then Worlds 2015 happened and Jonathan Reinig showed just how powerful an A-Wing swarm can be against the Gencon Special, and the amount of damage that they can dish out during a game. The same thing happened in 2016 but with Y-Wings supported by HWK's and YT-1300's.
I believe that for their point cost, compared to what starships can do, squadrons are under costed, or at least have way to much health for their price. That, coupled with flotillias and Bomber Command for multiple bomber reroll's, squadrons are necessary, and a max point squadron section is almost required.
Let me break it down this way. The GR-75 Combat Retrofit (24 points) has a single blue die to deal with starships, and another blue to deal with squadrons. It boasts a total of 4 points of damage absorption "life", with only a single scatter to try stop damage. The single evade is good for long and medium distances, but is worthless close up. So, as long as the attacker is able to deal 4 damage and have a single accuracy (or 2), the GR-75 is all but guaranteed dead. And that doesn't include all the other things that the ship can do, like upgrades that it can take. So, for 24 points you get a really good ship.
Now, lets compare that to a single A-Wing squadron (11points). It has speed 5 so it goes faster than the GR-75. It has the same "life" at 4. It has a better anti-squadron armament at 3 blues, and can attack ships at range 1 with a single black die. And, it has an ability to attack with 2 dice against a squadron that just attacked it. True, it doesn't get any tokens or have the ability to take upgrades. But, for a single A-Wing Squadron, you are getting a lot of bang for your buck, and if you want to compare points to points, you can take 2 A-Wings for less than the cost of the GR-75.
Even worse is the Y-Wing(10 points) when compared to the GR-75. It can move about the same speed as the GR-75, can attack squadrons with 2 blue dice, and ships with a single black die. And, because the Y-Wing is a bomber, the crit on the black die counts as more damage, and the ship can be affected by cards that affect bombers (I'm looking at you Bomber Command). I am ignoring heavy as it has no affect with/against starships. All that, and 6 points of hull. So. no single attack can actually kill the Y-Wing, and it generally takes 2-3 squadrons to attack the Y-Wing be able to kill it, as accuracies mean nothing, as well as crits. Finally, for 20 points you get two of them.
So, how do we fix this problem? First off, starships need to be able to deal more damage a turn against squadrons. Or, instead of rolling dice to see if you damage squadrons, have a set amount of damage on each arc that the ship can do, and the player can put that damage on how many ship(s) they want. So, like, the GR-75 might be able to deal 1 damage to a single squadron (guaranteed) out of each arc, an ISD might be able to deal 6 damage per arc. That's total, so against 2 A-Wings 1 would be dead, the other at 1/2 health. But, against a couple of YT-1300's, 1 would be at 1 hull, the other at full hull.
Or, reduce the number of hull points each squadron has. Reducing the amount of hull a squadron has allows them to die easier to not only other squadrons, but ships as well. I can easily see a reduction of 1 hull point for every squadron.
Finally, I can see a squadron being reduced in points from 134 to 100. While that won't make the problem go away, per se, it does make the issue a little less hard to deal with. Or, make Bomber Command unique.
And now, on to wave 5. Right now, there is very little in the wave that I see changing the squadron heavy mindset. And, some of it, like Relay, only makes it worse. True, they did come out with some nice new abilities, but how many of them can really, truly change the meta? The ships? Same thing.