Just to be clear though, I'm not saying Burn Drive is a poor ship system—it can be quite powerful/useful and I admit it'd probably serve the Legion rather well. But I dunno, to repeat the same system for yet another capital ship seems kinda uninspired. I feel that of all the ship types capitals should be given that extra effort to really make'em stand out, and part of that would involve giving them a unique ship system (or at least one that isn't used quite so frequently ).
Ah, I can see where you're coming from. Still, with the number of capital ships steadily increasing, that's going to become harder and harder as time goes on.
The Onslaught isn't in much trouble if it gets flanked. It has 270° or so coverage of at least 1 large, 1 medium, and 3 small ballistic weapons. Burn Drive can also help get it out of bad situations, like being flanked. It's when you get directly behind the Onslaught that it gets in trouble, but it's still got 2 medium ballistics pointing backwards and a heck of a lot of armor to bust through. The Onslaught is very specifically vulnerable to EMP or high-powered strike weaponry coming from a 90° cone directly behind it. And the best Onslaught builds are defensive in nature, mounting lots of Dual Flak PD to become almost immune to missile weaponry. The Onslaught's 2 TPC cannons fill a similar role to the Paragon's 2 large energy hardpoints, firing only directly forward and thus only able to be used against large and slow ships. The two ships are much more similar in battlefield role than you are making them out to be, even if they get there with different stats.
Eh, I'm still not convinced. Sure, you can burn drive out of a tricky situation if you need, and defensive weapons are good in the rear arc, but outside of that the Onslaught doesn't really deal well with flankers. It needs a fleet to support it to work best - every big ship does - but I feel the Onslaught needs substantially more than a Paragon might because a Paragon shouldn't be used to push forwards. I'm not specifically saying the ships are hugely different layout-wise. If you look at the weapon arrangement of an Onslaught and a Paragon, yes, they're fairly similar in many ways. But for what they are, they still present themselves very differently and aim to please best in quite different roles.
I don't believe you can ever point to two ships and say, "This one is better than that one," (unless it's a blatant upgrade or upsize of the other) because when it comes down to it, that all depends on your situation. There are many reasons in the campaign for instance, when I will look at two ships I could buy and pick one or the other. How good one ship is (ignoring pilot skill) is entirely reliant on where you put it and what you do with it.
You definitely can do so. For example, in 0.7.2, the Apogee was superior to the Aurora. That's a large part of why the Apogee is being nerfed and the Aurora is being "buffed".
See, I wouldn't have said the Apogee was "superior" to the Aurora. It's slower, less manoeuvrable, has a (arguably) defensive ship system and it's default loadout is most certainly
not friendly to its flux. But then, it has a large missile and large energy mount, neither of which the Aurora can boast, and the Apogee has the High-Res Sensors hullmod, which is fairly rare and (in the campaign) quite handy. Again, they're different, but I don't agree one is simply "better" than the other, in either direction.
... Although for the aesthetic, the Apogee definitely does it for me. It just feels so utilitarian, and I love that in a ship.