Well, no, being midline has nothing to do with its "problems". In fact, the majority of midline ships perform well under AI control (except maybe Gryphon) since their systems are very forgiving and they have decent flux stats. I don't know what are you on about midline being bad, it's the one tech type which doesn't have many weak ships. Their shields are supposed to be mediocre, if they weren't, they'd just be better high tech.
I really don't agree with that, the ONLY thing forgiving about Midlines is their systems. Notice how the Sunder is one of the worst ships in vanilla, backed by tier lists of the forums and most players. It lacks a mobility system, and like the conquest has bad shields and paper thin armor. The actually good Midline ships either have forgiving systems and/or 0.8 shields.
Sure this is a general idea but obviously exceptions exist. Also midline is hardest to describe clearly since they're somewhere in the middle, duh. If every ship followed the doctrine faithfully, it would make for a very boring roster of ships.
This just feels like a cop out to me honestly. Most of the good Midline ships follow a doctrine, and the most questionable ones don't, like the Sunder and Conquest. Nearly every HighT and LowT ships follow their doctrine in the ways that matter.
Conquest having bad shields is the whole idea behind it, it's not made to go in and brawl like a battleship. Not even mentioning that the combo of speed + firepower + defense would be hilariously broken.
Again, this doesn't make much sense. You don't have to go in to get annihilated for having THAT bad of shields. If the average shield strength of Midline is either 0.8 or 1.0, the Conquest has nearly half the shield strength, and I'm pretty sure its actually the worst ratio in vanilla at 1.4. This isn't mechwarrior, you can't outrange by that wide of a margin for that to be acceptable especially with equally bad armor and hull. Not to mention the Paragon already has its own range mod built in. The built in mod for the Conquest facilities more guns not more range, which you HAVE to get close enough to actually use or there is no point mounting them all, hence all the people talking about asymmetric builds or it being player only because of the finesse required to do so without dying.
Also, if thats the idea behind it it doesn't even fit Midline well then. Like you said its an outlier, but what makes it an outlier also makes it so much worse.
Crap, SCC posted while I was typing lol.
It's similar to Sunder, in that better shields would make it too good at tanking, in addition to being excellent at dealing damage.
This is probably the crux of it. Like I speculated, the Conquest would probably go from bad to insane if it was buffed in the wrong way. Its probably one of those things that's always going to be on the razors edge (if it ever does get changed, which I doubt) between amazing and awful. I imagine it was nerfed during its creation into its current state to avoid being too good.
I think of midline as mostly specialists. Brawler %u2014 anti-big ship frigate. Centurion %u2014 brick. Vigilance %u2014 there to give you that medium missile. Hammerhead? I'd say it's a generalist, actually, but that's because shooting things is so handy. Sunder %u2014 glass cannon. Drover, Heron %u2014 dedicated carriers (though this is cheating a bit, since you don't have much of a choice when it comes to carriers). Gryphon spews missiles. Conquest combines good flux stats, good mobility, good weapons with bad shields. It's just Falcon and Eagle that are straightforward generalists (and Hammerhead, as I mentioned).
This is how I feel too, and its probably part of why Midline seems to be confusing to me. I've also wondered if it couldn't do with some more ships being added in vanilla to round it out a little. Probably unnecessary but its the category I'd like to see expanded on more. What I'm assuming the problem is is that because each ship is a generalist, the statline works better or worse differently in every case. It just so happens to be weird on some of them and great on others, and some of them even have to be tweaked quite a bit.
Regarding the shields and flux stats, I find that High and Low tech ships USUALLY (massive disclaimer here) dont need much in the way of hullmods or crazy loadouts while Midlines, due to each ship being somewhat its own beast, need to be fitted carefully or have their weaknesses covered with expensive hullmods. This takes away from their superior flux stats because those points could have been dumped into vents on a HighT for example, which narrows the advantage Midline is supposed to have with its doctrine.
After all, what good are guns if you can't use them? Just because it has good flux stats that offset its bad shields doesn't excuse it from also having to use that flux to fire, and if it CAN'T fire, it can't stop its shield from getting pushed by more defensive builds, creating a vicious circle.
