@Duke Not sure what game size you are referring to: at 1500pts, and admech fleet without at least 4+ cruisers (or 3+ and a battleship) is going to be severely outnumbered and outgunned, AWR or not. And it can easily be argued that range increases define a vessel as much as weapon loadout; even if they were the same price, no one would argue that a dominator and a range increased tyrant are the same thing. Range matters, and so does accuracy/firepower.
I don't mind randomness in a game; it's part of what makes it fun. But having randomness in list building is generally a really bad idea. People like to know what they are buying, because random value is not very popular. Look at the american stock market for a good example of what happens when something stable becomes incredibly variable. If asked, most american citizens would have preferred higher real estate prices... infinitely better than spending all that money and finding out it's worth nothing.
Admech fleets require carriers, and nabbing AWR on a carrier is generally wasted points. I think a players should be able to run an AWR squadron if he likes, but it should be limited so that he does not have only AWR vessels. Also, I agree that all the option are good. AWR just adds the most firepower, and more firepower directly and consistently increases the effectiveness of a vessel, whereas most of the other ones are more circumstantial.
I think we all agree that whilst fleet defense turrets (to use Duke's example) are good, they are not in use every turn by every vessel, whereas better guns are. Randomness allows for the possibility of all AWR fleets, which is obviously very powerful. You would have an immediate advantage by shear virtue of having more powerful vessels than your point value was designed to accommodate. No one likes starting a game of with a strong disadvantage (I'm looking at you, Grey Knight vs. Daemons and Dark Angels vs. Chaos Space Marines
)
