Isn't this more an AI problem, IE that they don't know to arm their shields versus threats with longer ranged weapons?
They do now, actually - that was one of the first things I fixed when taking a closer look at the lance.
Yeah if the Lance keeps its 32 OP and gets this big nerf, im never going to use it again.
Your mistake, I believe
I think it's still rather overpowered, just down from the "insanely overpowered" levels it was at before. Given a 32 OP cost, this may be ok. Also: it's pretty useful at close range, even more so now - any ship taking a lance hit on the armor is going to be crippled quickly, with many weapons being disabled almost immediately - *and*, due to the high effective DPS, the armor damage is quite impressive. It's
also quite good against fighters.
So, to recap: excellent anti-armor, best range in the game - by far - for a direct-fire weapon, great in an anti-fighter role, massive EMP damage, perfect accuracy. Poor vs shields, poor dps, high OP cost.
I'm not going to claim that it's perfectly balanced, but the above sounds pretty good to me.
Lore-wise, you could say that a phase carrier has the tech to pull fighters into phase with it as they come in for a landing, or some such.
Why then they can not push out of phase Big Fat Torpedo? ))
Hah! Good point there. Well, I was just making up a rationalization for a mod that might do this - as of now, as I mentioned, these aren't in the base game. If they show up there, I'm sure I'll come up with something more solid to rationalize this away