Frigates can still do that. Making that happen has kind of been an obsession of mine.
What Wolves excel at currently is hit and run. If other frigates can do the shield killing, enough Phase Lances will crack armor - eventually. AI Wolves with Heavy Blasters tend to get themselves killed from poor flux management .... while Lancers tend to dance. I want the option to paint them with yellow and black strips....
The only things that forces me to use things besides Frigates are BS's/some BC's. For that, you need at least 1 "Tackle" capable ship to take the Alpha and 1 "Cracker" capable ship to break the armor. Destroyers can "Crack", but have a hard time "Tackling" safely.
Currently, I am grinding planetary invasions in Nex with 1 Apogee and a swarm of frigates.
On the primary subject at hand, I think a chart that showed Armor Reduction Values - modified by Target Analysis (and the Defensive Skills as well) - would be interesting.
Against the AI, it can be taken as a given that shields will drop. The question becomes does your swarm have the ability to breech armor and finish the deal before they come back up. If no, then your ships tend to continue to focus which makes them vulnerable - both to the target actually getting some shots off and to other ships arriving. If yes, being outnumbered does not matter significantly.
Against Frigates, the minimum seems to be one Mauler - for which I use a Cerberus or two in the early game. Against Destroyer's one HB with enough Cap somewhere in the swarm will do the job - I use a single Mule with a HB through mid game, because it is the cheapest platform with a large enough Cap pool to get enough shots off quickly. Against C's one Plasma Cannon will do it - Sunder can work, but I tend to skip it and get an Apogee because the Sunder's cap well is not quite big enough, it tends to suffer from sudden death syndrome, especially when piloted by the AI, and the Apogee gets +25% more range. As a rule of thumb, these weapons finish one size class larger fairly efficiently - but it will take more then one "shield breech".