Firing order - which empire goes first?

[dogscoff]

people with the xiati shipset (maybe cuz its reverse order alphabetical?, no idea really)
or people who are 'lucky' go first

Uhhh... no. Firing order is determined by who attacked who (ie who was in the sector already and who moved into it.)

The trouble with your suggestion of determining fire order based on ships speed is that in many, or even most confrontations, the two sides will all have ships of the same speed.

Finally, Aaron's latest project is reportedly some kind of advanced space combat engine, which may well make it into SE5. Hopefully that will solve all your problems.