Hmmm.... i altered a clean copy of the gameinfo folder and set all weapons and abilities to half their original value. The abilities, both friendly support and enemy aggressive were also set at half their original values just to keep everything in balance.
I played as advent, for six conquests of planets using a small fleet of 5 capitals, 10 illuminators, 10 scouts and 5 colony ships. All total 30. I kept the perspective at max ship closeup view, and the ships do look beautiful. 
At this vantage i would say that the scale is fine, the planets also at this view look more planet-sized in relation to the ships. There were some difficulties however.
At close range the ship movement was jerky when the fleet grouping was normal, i had to enlarge it to "loose" grouping to get the ship movement to smooth out as the ships were too close together. I am assuming in normal zoom-in/zoom-out mode i didnt notice because i was not right on top of the ships. Also in battle, which were relatively small of course to begin with, less than 10 enemy ships, averaging, 2,3, 4 and 5 enemy ships per new planet. It wasn't until i was halfway across the grav well that i noticed they were there at all, well... the fleet tree at the left of course let me know, but without any grids or icons for ships on a black space background, it was hard to see much of anything beyond several hundred meters beyond the ship's perspective. This was both interesting and a little frustrating, in that it was a different "feel" but also that information that i was used to having in a battle (enemy fleet size, location... etc...) was missing. Also in battle the reduced weapon ranges had a tendency to bunch my ships up on one another in attacking the grouped enemies. 
Traveling was hindered by not having any sort of over-view, and i found myself wanting a mini-map to orient myself. Of course the zoom-out feature accomplishes that with no loss of screen real-estate, but i was hoping for a HUD with a press of a button that would give me proximity information for enemies in the well, and for planets close by without having to get out of the close up view. Hmmmm....
Anyway, it is interesting. I think...
Perhaps a third drop would be better than half? But still even at half the weapon range, ships raging in battle across the other side of the grav well still appeared as icons. Perhaps the only way to adjust this would be to shrink the grav well as well. I dont know. Of course that may complicate the "On top of one another" problem. If i lessen the range to only a third instead of half, then i still have the same size well, and the icons at a distance view of other battling ships. With the icon view removed, in the no screen grid, icons, names, mesh ownership icons and such, it was difficult to even see there was a battle on the other side at all, with so few ships involved. I am assuming of course that if there were 25 or more raging, it would be much easier to see the battle. Of course if i lighten the background, then the ships and battles are easier to see, but the weapon effects such as bullets are almost totally un-noticed at all. So there is that contradiction of problems.
Also, in heavy battle with just a handful of ships at close range, (max ship view as before) the weapon effects of lasers, smoke, fire and electro/magnetic emminations from the battered craft slowed the frame rate down to a slide-show on the screen. If i pulled back into a zoom view however that completely disappeared.
So... will halving the weapon ranges work? I don't know to be honest. I didn't anticipate the other problems arising before actually trying it, and there could possibly be answers to each of these that would work, but they probably need to come from the devs instead of modders, as toggles and pop-up HUD's for close-up view is something i think would take hardcoding. Anyway, i am going to try again, with 1/3 ranges instead of half and see what kind of effect that produces. I dont think it will answer the grav-well identification of enemies, or the planet travel problems with being so close up. But it may of course smooth out the jerkiness of the ship movement and the battles dropping frame rate. But there is still of course the icons at a distance thing. Perhaps i should try it with a normal sized grav-well, and then reduce the well, haha, perhaps by a third instead of the half i was going to try. But we shall see.
Interesting experiment though.
Take care, hope this helps, if you still want to try it for yourself however, i can post the close up changes in a mini mod and you can download it and give it a try. Let me know. Til then i will try the new 1/3 range reduction and the smaller grav-well and get back to you.
Sincerely,
-Teal
Sins Forums
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