The first, it's impossible to make the UEF ships for boardside; it'd look silly having their mass drivers anywhere but the front.
As for the second point, I've done some of that. The Aeolus has 50 max speed, 70 overclock, and a 90 m/s afterburner. Though the Sanctus is a bit slower. I'm going to make the tev corvettes a bit faster than the uef frigates and make the Karuna, nara, bell, and chimera have slow turning and speed, as they are mobile artillery, basically, so that way they could be flanked among other things, meaning you'd need teamwork to protect them, by utilizing your sanctus/aeolus/deimos allies.