Formations for HUGE battles ?

[Q]

In my experience this is indeed a problem. As far as I know the maximum ship number in a formation is now 99. But even with smaller numbers these large formations frequently are in touch or even overlap with the enemy formation at the beginning of the combat. This gives the first shot of the defender a huge advantage and is IMHO a little unbalancing. And the problem of the path blocking occurs even more if you use lot of fighters.