General question regarding scale

I am looking to start building models again and want to have some uniformity in scale to my collection.

As for sci-fi capital ships, what scale is preferred 1/1000, 1/500, or 1/350 and why?

As for fighters, what scale is preferred 1/72, 1/48, or 1/32 and why?

It's really a user preference for scale. Some builders may stick to a smaller scale because they don't have room, whereas some have plenty and they go with bigger scales. Larger models tend to have more detail, or detail that can be added, but it also depends on the quality of the model. For fighters the most common scales are 1/144, 1/72. 1/48 and 1/24. I'm not an expert on capital ships so I will allow others with more experience to answer that. The trouble is, that not many model companies make capital ships. Hasegawa with the Captain Harlock series and Bandai with Macross (perhaps soon to be Star Wars capital ships?).

TazMan2000

Also depends on the ships. While a Star Trek capitol ship, like the TOS Enterprise, let's say, is less than a foot long at 1:1000, a Star Destroyer at that scale would be over five feet long. Imagine a 1:350 Star Destroyer! Almost 15 feet! Don't even think about an SSD...

--Alex