[Slick]

Not only can you not guarantee the placement of your ship, but it could be affected by the destruction of an enemy ship whose empire you haven't even met yet.

I would think that in the mid-game and beyond where combat is common, new ships are quasi-randomly distributed throughout the list with a tendency to be at the bottom since in general more ships are built than destroyed as the game progresses. A massive fleet battle would open up lots of intermeidate slots, though. I really don't see what a player could do with that information to make any significant difference in a game; especially since you can't know the position of any other empire's ships.