One of the best systems I've played under was the Langton rules with large ship actions (10+ ships/side). One chart, one dice roll and with the different classes of ships different possibilities of what each ship could or couldn't do. I've seen most of my ships carry on in formation with the poorer ships in quality just blithley sailing on as turning to fast wold have dismasted them or their crew quality so poor that they could not fire.

This is handled a different way with the SPI game frigate. A random number being taken and any ship in a hex ending with that number and some unfortunate action accured.

Like David for me it needs to be simple, effective but retaining the fun aspect.