I was tooling around in my Hoplite last night when I was attacked by a Starfarer. Not very maneuverable but very heavy shields. As I began offensive maneuvers I realized that my 4 class 3 lasers were not hurting it. And while missiles will hurt it, you have to have more than 12. So a single fighter of any class isn’t going to do any damage to what amounts to a capital class ship. If I was in my connie, the 4 class 5 lasers will hurt it, and there are enough missiles onboard to kill it, but I wasn’t. What this is telling me is that for things like piracy, ship taking operations, you are going to have at least one ship type that can punch in the same weight class as whatever ship your trying to take.
More ships of a small size could get through it’s shields. The issue is the power plant and shield generator only have to recover the one side that you are able to damage. Once that is spread across multiple vectors, then you get certain area’s that recover slower then the rest. But yes, solo flying against larger ships will not be equal but in return that Starfarer cannot manuever in such a way to take out small fighters 1 vs 1.
I can take out anything 1 vs 1 except for Starfarers, Caterpillars, and Reclaimers in a Avenger which is totally fine with me. If I am able to single handedly take out the largest ships in the game, it would kill all need for multi-crew or fleets.
Couple of quick comments…
The Vanguard has 4 size 2 lasers on the nose if I recall, not size 3 and that would make a big difference in getting those shields down.
Also, distortion weapons are important now. They are far more effective than lasers for matching sizes. If you have a more configurable ship, like a Hornet or a Buccaneer, you can toss a couple of distortion weapons in and tear up shields much more quickly.
Also, and this is a change from some time ago but it it applies here, shields recharge more quickly the more charge they have. Meaning a ship with 90% shields active on one face will recharge faster than the same shields at 50% on the same ship. It is an exponential recharge rate, not a linear one. This is to help protect larger vessels from little fighters. Now, even with that, multiple fighters concentrating on a single side will be more effective than each of them hitting a separate side. Taking down all sides by 5% is less damage in the long run than taking down 10% on a single side because the 10% takes much longer to recharge. Which means focus fire is a good thing.
Sorry, it seems I am entirely incapable of offering short answer responses to anything 
lol 
I’m glad to hear it, I was very concerned that size wouldn’t matter when my SH could cut a connie in half in 5 seconds.
Yeah that is no longer the case.
The SH is ok still, but it is finally starting to gain value where it always should have - in its ability to have a second crew member and its highly configurable hard point set up.
Having a SH with a turret that is dedicated to something like distortion weapons is awesome, or at least it is getting there. That second seat means something, and the weapon segregation means something. So a SH pilot can fight off immediate threats while the gunner works on the bigger target, shutting them down and making openings for strafing runs by the pilot. It still isn’t quite there, but it is much closer.
The thing is, and we have talked about this in the past, when we were running ships in items 1.0 we were running imaginary stats that are impossible to achieve in the game. We had 100% power all the time, and 100% heat absorption all the time, and 100% regen on shields all the time while still having 100% maneuverability through our thrusters all the time. Well, those days are gone, and good riddance to them I say!
Now, heat matters, power really matters and if you push any one aspect of your ship too far it will become a problem for all of your systems. Overheat your guns and your engines have to give a little to make up the difference. Push too hard on trying to evade and you wont have power to fire those guns continuously once you get back on target. There is a nice balance coming into play with all of the systems that we have long known was coming. It is still a work in progress, of course, but it is showing great strides with each patch and update.
So in short (heh), no you can no longer cut a Connie in half in 5 seconds. But those big guns on the Connie can cut you in half in less than that…if they can get you in their sights
As it should be. Glad to hear they’re making progress in the right directions. Big ships should be worth something and they weren’t for the longest time. They were basically clunky fighters with the same lifespan.