Tabletop Spaceship Wargame Design Part 10, Researching Firestorm Armada v2

Firestorm Armada is a fleet system that is as complex as Battlefleet Gothic but using different mechanics to accomplish dynamics.

Weapons roll pools of six sided dice to determine how effective the shots are at damaging the target.

Weapons have a profile that describes how many dice they roll at each range. These dice are rolled and compared to
Dice that turn up as a 6 'explode' and add another die to the pool.  Instead of each success dealing a point of damage, the total number of successes are compared to the target's armor. If successes >= Armor, the ship takes a hit.

After testing out the game I found the exploding dice to be untenable. It resulted in lots of unfun situations, either impossible comebacks or annihilating any chance of a comeback.
The armor system also generates situations where a ship's turn results in nothing if they don't score enough hits. For me that doesn't fly. My target is a few ships, so each activation should be impactful. With the armor system, perfect tactics can be denied an effect due heavily to dice rolls.