Yes, I shall elaborate.
It seems that the Noir ships are very capable at kiting in their individual classes, have extremely tough shields, and these two facts mixed with their tendency to spam wings and avoid combat make for difficult kills.
The only ships that I've found that are effective at killing them are ships with huge amounts of burst firepower that can take out their shields and some sort of movement ability, be it explosive drives or phase.
Alternatively, ships with extreme range and damage weapons.
In fact, the only ship I've found to be capable of effectively dealing with Noir ships is the Nidhoggr flagship from the Sanguinary Anarchistic Defectors faction mod. It has explosive drives and burst damage capabilities but costs a minimum of 550,000ยข and only becomes effective after the installation of mass missile batteries.
Actually, the only time I ever didn't have trouble is when their invasion fleets attacked my Noir tech star fortress of which has extreme range and damage so it doesn't really care about Noir ships... Or really anything for that matter.
I would like to state that, I don't think the faction being OP is a bad thing, in fact, I enjoy having a challenge for my suped-up end game war fleet, but maybe don't advertise them as, "Not very good," when the only thing that can reliably beat them is themselves and expensive specialized flagships that, in their own faction lore, are so extremely rare and powerful that are thought to be impossible dreams/legends.
EDIT: Oh and I forgot to mention that I did a bit of testing with various ships against the Ame-class standard battleship. The observations of which were used to reach the above conclusions. I don't have a lot of warships/carriers, but I did have six, each from different factions and all optimized. Only two won against Ame. One being the Nidhoggr and the other Metafalica, and only after nearly half an hour of chip damage (For Metafalica.) And another common occurrence is the Ame will just completely stun lock its enemy and just chip away at it forever with attack wings.
All ships outfitted with the best money can buy with all blueprints unlocked across all currently available faction mods and base mods.
Additionally, all ships are set to autopilot search and destroy until enemy is in view, in which case they're specifically set to destroy the enemy ship.
Pyridoxate (highest level carrier from XLU): stun locked and destroyed
Discernment (highest level carrier from ORA): stalemate with Discernment unable to destroy Ame's shields, even with anti-capital bombers. Likely eventual loss for Discernment as CR dropped faster due to wing loss.
Vendetta (XIV battlegroup warship): stun locked and destroyed
Metafalica (Sylphon Outcast highest level warship): Ame can kite indefinitely but Meta can get some lucky shots off and eventually win or starve Ame of CR. Meta can get stunlocked if not careful and very unlucky.
Nidhoggr (High level Sanguinary flagship): Engine boosts into Ame, fires an insane amount of ordnance into the shields to pop them and then launches a large salvo of missiles: some of which are blocked by the near instant shield regeneration but ultimately Nidhoggr has little trouble with Ame.
Here's video of the stunlock:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/305838827208048651/544983541650423819/Stunlock.webmConclusion: The space Frenchmen will stunlock you and beat you to death with spoons unless you have the power and speed of a planet sized asteroid traveling at the speed of light.
Suggestion: If the faction is truly supposed to be, "Not that good," then maybe consider reducing their speed and giving their shields a good blanket nerf. Maybe also do something about their stunlocking abilities? If not, rebrand them as high tech aliens or something with exotic out of this world shield tech, they designs are already unique and alien enough to work with such a rebranding.
Again, thanks for taking the time to make good content for the game, I'm grateful at the end of the day, and I request you take my words with a grain of salt. Maybe it's just me that's having a hard time with them? Maybe, who knows.
EDIT2: Just engaged an enemy Noir tech star fortress. Thing just instant killed the Nidhoggr. Had to devmode my way out as nothing could retreat fast enough. How do you defeat this thing?