Ships without officers will try to close in with PD weapons if it is all that they have. I tried that with Heron with only dual flak (and all other mounts empty). Instead of running away while fighters do their job, Heron tries to kiss the enemy with dual flak.
Astral can survive solo in the simulator until it runs out of CR.
Re: Paragon and missing Tachyon Lances.If you cannot find Tachyon Lances, then a pulse laser theme configuration (four autopulse, pulse lasers in mediums, maybe dual flak in universals, and either IR pulse lasers or burst PD lasers in smalls) is reasonably effective. It will not destroy quite as many ships as the four lance and two HVD wonder, but it can probably kill as many ships as Astral can before peak performance runs out. It is not pretty, but it is practical and effective enough.
If you want shield pierce, HIL and Ion beams can substitute for lances, but that means fewer heavy blasters for close-range fighting and it is not as effective as Tachyon Lances. Ion Beam is good for disabling ships through shields, but not at causing much damage, plus it is a flux hog.
Part of what makes Lances effective is not just burst damage (which can overload shields of some ships), but it is 1) almost hitscan, which lets the player punish the AI anytime their shields are down (and you can trick the AI to drop shields at times), and 2) shield piercing. Four lances will cause not insignificant damage to ships even if their shields are up, if it has hard flux... which is why Paragon has two HVDs to put hard flux on shields.
Re: Tactical Laser and IPDAITactical Laser is slowish. Advanced Turret Gyros is a must, and even then, it is still not quite as fast as it should be, unlike (LR) PD Laser. That costs too much OP in 0.8.x. Tactical Laser can also be somewhat flux intensive. Before 0.8, it was better because ships had more OP via skills and LR PD Laser had flux cost of 100 instead of 40. (If PD Laser was not an option, the only other viable alternate back then was Tac Laser+IPDAI). Tac Laser plus IPDAI is for long-range prevent PD, not for close-range and high-powered defense.
Capital rankingsMy personal flagship rankings from best to worst are: Paragon, Astral, Conquest/Legion/Onslaught, Odyssey.
All a playership Astral needs for weapons are maybe a few burst lasers to pick off stray missiles. OP goes to fighters, hullmods, and vents. The best fighters are expensive, and six will eat a lot of OP. Astral is very OP hungry. The Astral then runs away from everything while fighters kill.
You forgot to take "fun" into account. That's a very important stat!
For me, fun is usually the one that is self-sufficient and can destroy the enemy most efficiently. Currently, that award goes to Paragon. (In 0.7.x, that award went to Onslaught. In early 0.8, Astral.) Also, I like Paragon because it is the only ship that feels like it has guns. All other ships except carriers and maybe capitals with Gauss Cannon have knives and chainsaws - their shot range feels much too short to be proper guns. If I want to play a melee game, I would play a fighting or hack-and-slash game.