So now that I'm far enough into this Nexerlin playthrough for Diable where I'm effectively *** away hundreds of thousands of credits on ships I gotta say, on the ship front everything seem to fall into a fairly nice place all on it's own, the dependence on missiles and fighters is inherently precarious but the Wanzers and micro missiles are mean enough to make it work in bulk. The ships themselves seem to tend to favor very excessive amounts of PD, mostly because any small hybrid mount on a Diable ship has to mount either a Recson S or PD weapon if you don't have a player or SS+ to introduce some foreign weapons. Speaking of the Recson it is frankly a pretty crazy weapon that very much makes up for how underwhelming I found most of the other Diable weapons, the Recson is probably one of the best kinetic weapons available to me...I can't imagine it not getting a nerf or rebalance honestly, though it does have the problem where it doesn't actually synergize all that well with it's HE counterpart the Grave HMG, one is a long range burst fire weapon and the other is a less long range sustained fire weapon, considering how Diable seem to love using medium hybrid mounts as their bread and butter I'd be very interested in a rebalance that makes the Recson and Grave match up more like the LAC and LAG in vanilla.
Which brings me to the other various weapons, the Burchels seemed very not worth it, they cost a relative lot of OP for a PD and didn't actually control incoming threats as well as I'd hoped, the IBIS was better but still felt like I was working with a mediocre system. The State was...strange, it seemed to do a well enough job once the shields were down but otherwise I didn't see any reason to choose it over a Recson considering it's immense flux generation. I didn't actually test the Glaux. The Uhlan and HTPC performed more or less the same but felt very different, the HTPC gave the Gust some very exciting teeth to it, while the Uhlan felt like the Grave, technically effective but a sub-par usage of an otherwise good slot, with it's slow and inaccurate projectiles feeling like they were more for show than anything, I went a few battles in my Pandemonium with my Uhlans totally disabled and I didn't notice any actual difference in my combat performance. Thunderbolts are a very neat concept but they felt wholly outclassed by micro missiles that had better tracking and only slightly less damage output, not to mention regenerating ammo, similarly the micro missiles were just so effective when massed that buying a ship with room for a plover or something instead of more micro missiles felt like a waste.
In terms of the individual ships I haven't quite flown all of them yet but generally speaking the frigates feel like a waste of supplies, Drafts are basically a Torch that takes longer to fall apart and has a fraction of the fire power, they're only really good early on as micro missile boats, and Vapors are just Hayles without a turret for a PD weapon and even worse flux capacity to maximize their suicidal tendencies. The Destroyers were fairly hit and miss, the Stratus is perhaps the best combat freighter a trader could ask for with it's frost element drones and surprisingly generous forward firepower, the Hayle was, as I said, a larger and slightly sturdier Vapor with all the same suicidal tendencies, the Calm was an excellent missile boat much like the Draft but often struggled with the flux just from it's own micro missiles, involving the shield or it's twin spinal guns led to a startlingly rapid overload, and the Fractus felt...well it didn't really feel like a Diable ship with only 1 medium missile hardpoint, what's more since Diable don't have any LRMs the Fractus didn't feel much like a carrier either, it would have a torpedo and no way to actually make it count, even alongside the Hayle and Calm it was pretty thoroughly meh. For cruisers the Gust and Haze were more impressive, the Haze I actually didn't use first-hand because the Gust just does so many good things for the Diable fleet that in hindsight I can't imagine how I could be expected to choose the Haze over the Gust, the Haze has some very impressive mounts but as I said I can't speak for it's agility or flux management so they may be as worthless as they are on the Vapor, the Gust on the other hand certain had some flux issues but they never felt dangerous or unmanageable, the Gust felt perfectly suited to both a light battle carrier and hunter-killer role, basically most of the things that make the Maelstrom worthwhile in a smaller package. Speaking of the Maelstrom I've not tested the Storm yet but the Maelstrom was quite satisfactory for most of the same reasons the Gust was, except it offered much more generous firepower for direct engagements, although it does have that awkward clump of small hybrid mounts in the center that is generally used for PD, which felt like a bit of a wasted opportunity to me so I used them for shard cannons, the Flicker Drive further offset many of the Gust's flux issues by making it very easy to withdraw and engage at the drop of a hat if you can control your momentum, but really I like to go big or go home so I simply had to test the Pandemonium and it is a very impressive ship, the Maelstrom's flicker drive with that much firepower is just a sight to behold...until you get stuck in with another large capital ship and realize you have poor flux management, moderately poor weapon mounts (again, the awkward blob of PD weapons, but this time there's two) compared to other capitals, a lot of inertia that severely complicates disengaging with the Flicker Drive, and somewhat like the Fractus it doesn't terribly feel like a Diable ship in combat, this time however because it's a giant warship not only with no flight decks but also with only 6 missile mounts on the whole thing.
I won't try to tell you how to balance anything (aside from the Recson...), just offering my 2 cents on the ships and weapons as I've been using them.
I may or may not also be a bit sleep deprived as I type this, so please excuse any gibberish or nonsense.