For myself the problem seemed to have been the difficulty level. Set at normal I poped the destroyers on all three toons (sci, tac, eng) though it did take longer depending which one I was using. And they have a variety of gear and ships with only my Fed Eng having a tier 6 ship.
Well for myself the launcher downloaded a 100Mb patch then reopened and started downloading a 9.8Gb patch. Canceled and forced verified and after it had finished it began re-downloading the 9.8Gb patch.