I expect fighter fixes will come with the eventual skill revamp - it was skills (and especially officers with skills) that pushed them towards irrelevance. In the meantime, some mods (SS+, for example) do add some skills that boost fighters.
Or, for quick fixes to a small subset of the fighter problems: maybe fighters shouldn't count towards that 25 ship limit? Or maybe AI fleets should actually respect said limit? One or the other should make a difference here.
Brawler: Unless the "Damper Field" significantly improves flux stats somehow, this looks like a pretty severe nerf to an already rather niche vessel. I guess we'll see how it plays out, though, given that I don't actually know what that ship system does.
HEF changes are interesting; makes it merge pretty well with burst damage weapons like the plasma cannon. Now if only I could actually make a good plasma cannon Sunder again... the (relatively) recent flux cost increase made that pretty much a non-starter, though; you need SO and a lot of vents to have the dissipation - and then you find that firing the thing fills up 2/3 of your flux bar and any incoming damage locks you out of using your main gun.
Tachyon Lance changes are also interesting; I was one of the people who thought its current state worked pretty well, so I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do with a buffed version. (Specifically, it's great on a Sunder in the early game, when you're mostly going up against pirate ships that can't just laugh off the soft flux.)
You listed weapon slot covers twice.
