Small Tri-Tach ships are a lot faster, but that's perfectly normal. Heavier hi-tech ships are slow. Onslaught, Dominator and Enforcer are the fastest ships in their categories. They don't need powerful shields because it takes three anti-matter shots to just break the armor. Their firepower is overwhelming. Conquest is the most agile battlecruiser, it has 25% more powerful generators than the Odyssey, two times more weapons and three times more speed. Sunder with a plasma cannon or three heavy blasters can destroy cruisers and battlecruisers in 1-on-1 fights. I sincerely don't see your point, Nanostrike.
I'm referring mostly to the Frigates and Destroyers. The Tri-Tach ones absolutely destroy their lower-tech rivals ridiculously easy due to Speed being so important and Shields being so much better than armor. It's been this way from the beginning. Something needs to be done to shake that up. Especially in the Frigate department.
Aside from the Hound, ALL Low-Tech/Midline Frigates seem to be crawling compared to the Tempest and Hyperion (Not even counting their teleporters!). And that's the biggest thing that aggravates me. It makes them INCREDIBLY frustrating to fight because, if they're well piloted, you can't catch them at all and they can fight until their flux is high, then just retreat, vent, and repeat.
Unless you get a very lucky hit or two on them, there's very little you can do against this. However, the entire issue would be taken down a peg with some faster Low-Tech/Midline ships. Make them fragile or whatever to compensate, but just give some comparable speed!
The problem isn't quite as bad with Destroyers and more-or-less vanishes by the Cruiser stage. But with Frigates, the options are sorely limited. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the current ships. Just that we need more of them to even out some balance issues that are starting to be pretty glaring.