Since we seem to have a similar tilt on what a space battle should look like, here's my two cents.
1) 8 ships is too many, and historically most conquest maps top out at 6 (AoR, Feudal).
2) Since this is a space battle, there should be no such thing as a "fighter zone", there should be "fighters ...

Just throwing this out there.

A large map, a battle of space stations (conquest style).

Core features:
- Each player starts with a fully decked out station (fighter bay, bridge, decks, defence turrets, mega-cannon).
- There are asteroid fields (autodeploy penalties), mining moons far away, etc ...