Clarent Tubes are not that much of an issue tbh, its just the Roland systems - scaling up to 4x the dps and 4x the ammo is a bit much for a M->L missile upgrade.
This. So much this.
Clarents by themselves are only very dangerous to frigates, namely ones that rely heavily on maneuver or specialized ship systems to survive like Wolves, Hyperions, Tempests, Imaginoses, etc. as a single Clarent strike on the ship itself is (99% of the time) an instant kill. When fighting the Templars, I will never deploy any frigates I own - especially Tempests - since they are guarenteed to get smoked by a Clarent at some point during the battle. The only time Clarents become a serious problem is when you spot 2+ Teuton Smiter wings with an Archbishop, since they'll constantly rearm and spam you to death.
The ROLAND, on the other hand, is a harbinger of destruction. In my last Nexerelin playthrough as the Mayorate, I went out of my way to go ROLAND farming to put together a Del Azarchel with two of these + a Clarent tube, expanded racks & ECCM, after using the console to test the design out. With missile spec, you get 15 shots from both racks and with the ship's Fast Missile Racks, even the AI can fire them at an unholy rate. When it's dry, it'll still autoload at a little under one shot/minute. Each volley deals something like 25k damage with the correct officer skillset, and it is effectively unavoidable for most ships. It's also very difficult to kill that cruiser, given the ROLAND's absurd range and my habit of positioning artillery ships well away from the front. All of that comes in a package that has a deployment cost of 18, with combat aptitude 10.
All I can say is, the game basically ended once I had that thing operational. Battles where I was fighting two or even three very large enemy fleets at once were largely trivial, given how many ships would get vaporized during each volley; although the AI doesn't use its ammo as well as I'd like, there often wasn't a lot of overkill going on, so leftover Clarents often find new targets and either overload or kill them outright. Only once the Del Azarchel had run out of ammo did the tempo of the fighting slow down, but by then winning the battle is only a matter of cleaning up.
Even against the Templars themselves, it was funny how quickly the ROLANDs overwhelm a Paladin or an Archbishop by driving its flux through the roof and punching gaping holes in its armor, leaving it an easy target for me to finish off - assuming another volley doesn't kill it first. Crusaders get seriously gimped if they eat a full barrage, while Jesuits and Martyrs straight-up die.
I'd suggest reducing the ROLAND's range, slightly slowing the initial missile, and having it spawn only three Clarents instead of four. E: Just noticed the unreleased patch notes giving these big flux costs to fire - will have to see how it affects things.