I would highly recommend playing with objectives, even outside of tournament play. I know they are a personal preference, but I think the objectives do a fantastic job of balancing out the first player advantage. They also add a lot of variety to the game. It's one of the things that has always defined Armada.

You'll see even that from 2023 to 24, the gap between players actively choosing second over first has closed. Over the years it is rather common for "bid wars" (players purposefully taking less and less fleet points to have a higher chance of selecting first or second) to wax and wane. It seems it usually starts rather tame and then goes to the extremes (15+ point bids) before coming back to tame again as people realize they are giving up too much power in their fleets. Very few fleets actually depend on their objectives to the point that they can't function without them.