Okay, i played the new Citadel version a bit and while the balance seemed good, there were still some little details that will need some fix.
The first thing i noticed is that the Stable freighter is unavailable in the Citadel station. Late game it's not a problem as Citadel cruisers offer plenty (too much?) cargo space for your supplies. Early on however, your frigates will struggle holding all the loot. Also no ship description.
For the Frigates, i have a soft spot for the Porter drone, the fortress shield make it one of the best tank in the game and you can even try some fancy loadout with all the universals mounts available. Unfortunately, as it is an unnamed craft, the max CR is very limited and it will quickly be unusable after one or two battles. But given it's pretty cheap and fast, it overall balance the thing.
The Aural is okay, it fills the role of proper "combat" frigate and even have a decent cargo storage. Pretty good in early game frigate knife fight but tends to die when bigger ships looks at it too long. Later on, it will get replaced with the Mako in most fleets.
The Particle don't have real utilities other than a cheap early game flagship thanks to its speed, in the hand of the AI however...
The Conduit feels a bit like the Tempest, it's fast and can mount quite a lot of guns, the Plasma launcher is the ultimate bane of missiles and fighters. It would actually make a much better PD ship than the Porter as the main gun AOE can wreck entire wings in a single shot. Not that great against bigger ships tough. I also noticed that when the Berserk system is used, the sounds are "muffled" like the Fortress shield, is it intended? I would also like to know more about the buff it give rather than "improve the performances across the board" that give the description, we want numbers!
In the destroyer category, the Ayre is basically a high tech Condor with more customization possibilities. The sensor drone is handy when you have LRMs.
The Comet remind me of the Mule, only faster. Not much to say about it, only that the Elite variant weapons group aren't complete and lack autofire (nearly all Citadels ships suffer from this, you might need to re-check this).
I liked quite a lot the Modem even though the cheap/Elite variant seems quite wonky. Unguided missiles aren't ideals when used on broadsides hardpoints, i'm also surprised that no variant use the Parabola lrm, that ship was built for them! No description on the ship nor on the ship system, i'm curious to know what kind of guns the very useful Vixen drone use. All in all, the (lrm) Modem is a damn good long range support.
While the Comet is a semi-utility ship, the Tacit is the fully militarized variant. It's pretty much the same as its little brother, just meaner.
For the cruisers, i had quite a lot of trouble using the Nova. As it is more of a broadside ship when using its system, i can't fly and aim the shield at the same time (i use the strafe and turn to cursor). I'm not sure either what kind of large weapon it should use as i found the Chirped pulse pretty underwhelming at its job. I won't say much as i can't fly this ship correctly so i'm probably the one who do this wrong.
The Torus might be on of my favorite Citadel cruiser. It's incredibly tanky but unfortunately the vent AI from SS+ doesn't work very well with its role. When well supported, this ship just won't die, it's good battle partner with the Driver cruiser as it kinda lack firepower for its size. Speaking of the Driver, the large weapon usually stick out of the shield radius, just an aesthetic issue.
The Adumbral is a cruiser sized Hyperion and it show. It can have a pretty nasty broadside if you switch the eFlak for another plasma blaster but it also explode if you blow on it. Not sure about the side srms, i guess those are just free damage added for the hell of it? Hard to use correctly though.
Haven't really used the Inland but i'm quite underwhelmed by this one. Only one flight deck, weapons can't focus fire on a single target and the ionic generator take ages to fire and only work at relatively short range. Honestly this ship might benefit from a second launch bay to be useful, of course it would need to be much more expensive as a result.
For the capital ships, i couldn't afford the Monolith in my campaign however i'm wondering what's with all those built in mining lasers?
The Sierra carrier is pretty good, something between the Odyssey and the Astral. It work surprisingly well as a long range support with Tachyon lances. For brawling however? Not really. If you want to get up close and personal, Drivers/Toruses are much safer bet.
I don't have much to say for the fighters. Arrowheads and Heaks do their job without being specials, the two bombers kinda suck as their description suggest it, the only one worthy of talking is the Mako. Later on it's probably better to sell your frigates (with the exception of Porters) and replacing them with Makos. I noticed something funny, as they are fighters, they lack a collision radius and sometimes i could see groups of Makos "stacking" themselves over each others and covering their teammates with their own shields, making the group extremely hard to take down without large weaponry. It's more of a random thing than a proper trick though.
That's all, not much else to say, it's seemed pretty well balanced to me. Just some "?" in the descriptions, some missing descriptions for some ships and all the little details i said. Just one thing about the plasma blaster, it's pretty oversized and the sprite itself is... Erhh... Bland? I can offer you to rework this one if you want, i like this weapon.