Many thanks Alex for the new notes!
Apogee Fan wall of text to follow.....
As someone that fell in love with the Apogee during my iron-mode play-through, the Apogee is already an excellent cruiser:
-1st Rate shields (0.60 base)
-Large Energy & Large Missile hardpoints
-Reasonably good base speed (60)
-Decent amount of cargo space
-Built in High resolution sensors and surveying equipment (Excellent for reducing surveying costs in the current version).
With the right officer perks and hardened shields you can get the shields flux down to 0.32/Damage, making them extremely tough. I use Locust SRM'S and a converted hanger with a Xyphos wing for additional PD support (not to mention the built in Active Flare launcher) to make it an excellent anti-fighter platform/tank, and use an Autopulse & 2xMedium Gravitons and a Tactical laser for primary damage (it's forward damage is it's weak point, and I'm short on OP after all the hullmods I have installed). This current configuration works best against swarms of fighters, but holds up well against any other high damage sources; there were very few cases that I was concerned even on iron-mode due to the overall durability of the Apogee.
The Autopulse laser & Converted hanger changes will free up another 14 OP (50% OP cost on Xyphos (15 OP) & no need for Expanded magazines (7 OP) ); so while I would say overall that the Converted Hanger changes will be a nerf in this case, I'll still have spare OP in exchange (Xyphos are tough and stick close to my Apogee so don't often die, so the replacement rate was never an issue for me).
Looking at the changes:"Reduced fuel/ly to 2" -This is a rather nice buff, makes sense for a long range exploration ship to get better fuel/ly, and it becomes an even nicer choice for exploration/surveying/salvaging.
"Increased fuel capacity to 200 and cargo capacity to 400"-Small, but nice little buffs, I guess it is being moved further into an explorer/salvaging role, which suites my current play-style
"Changed arc of large front hardpoint to 10 degrees (was: 5)"-Don't think I really noticed this...or perhaps I did at first but learned to work with it as I familiarized myself with the Apogee.
"Reduced deployment and supplies/month costs to 18 (was: 25)"-It may be because I love level 3 energy weapons (and exploration), but I've tried the Aurora, Dominator, Doom (well it is getting buffed now..), Eagle & Falcon and the Apogee is my favourite of the lot. If the other cruisers got OP reductions as well I would feel better about this change, but otherwise it seems a bit too much for the only cruiser with a Level 3 Energy weapon and 0.6 flux/damage shields (If you have to nerf anything, please leave the shields at 0.6; the best feature of the Apogee IMO is it's ability to take huge amounts of shield damage).
However:"Changed coverage of medium turrets to not cover front and overlap in the back"This is a bit of a downgrade, but the Apogee is pretty weak in terms of forward firepower. I admit I only use the two Medium's for Graviton beams, but I'm running short on OP (Lots of hull-mods, and no vents or capacitors). Not having that additional extra power (albeit weak) of those mediums is going to be missed (even if they were useless against small targets since the beams can't converge). I'm wondering what your intention was with this change (eg stop the Apogee out damaging other cruisers in exchange for better cost effectiveness as an explorer/salvager ship)?
If the reason for the change is to reduce it's forward firepower, then perhaps those medium energy turrets could be removed and replaced with non-removable 360 degree Point Defence system (eg something like the monitor's Flak), it's already a tough ship, but I feel that this would be much more useful then having two rear-only firing medium energy weapons.
Another separate thought is that the forward-most (left side) small energy turret only covers the back & side, while the other small energy turret (rear, right side) overlaps a little on the front. With the changes to the medium energy turrets, only a single small energy turret will now be able to cover part of the front (rear, right side one). If you could rotate the arc of the forward-most small energy turret 45 degrees or so clockwise so that it covers part of the same arc in the forward position as the other small energy turret then at least they could both provide focused fire on front located threats with PD weapons or be equipped with tactical lasers to provide a bit more extra DPS to make the loss of the two front facing mediums a little easier to digest.