Also, the central node has a bad shield because it's a huge armored ship that can continue fighting while the central node vents. You're *supposed* to dedicate most of the OP of the central node to shield quality; the ship is designed with the assumption that most builds will do that.
That is exactly what i do actually, combined with a high level officer with all the flux related and shield related skills, more so out of necessity than out of personal preference, because otherwise i feel like a slow moving glass cannon.
I get the idea that this ship is meant to have an escort during battle, but in a lot of cases you really have to actively babysit it, otherwise it gets taken out.
IMO the flux on the cathedral is so strict that i avoid using the core's special ability entirely out of fear that i may overload and become a sitting duck. Due to it's slow speed and the fact that it's a really big target, it'll become inevitable that it'll have to tackle against more than one enemy and some of the other capital ships are better designed to tackle multiple at once enemies than the cathedral is, which i think it a big part of why people find it underwhelming in general.
It is inevitable that it'll be compared to other ships of its kind, specially considering it's DP cost.
One question i do have is: what is the cathedral meant to be exactly?
-It doesn't have neither the shield or the armor to be a proper tank
-It doesn't have enough guns to be a "glass cannon", i mean it has A LOT of guns overall, but they are all spread out and some will be out of range... which makes sense, but what i mean is, it's potential firepower can be outdone by other ships.
-It doesn't have the bays to be a proper carrier... I mean, it does, with it having four in total, but two of these are in the core and we already discussed why the core needs to focus all it's attention on shielding and flux management.
-It can take A LOT of crew so it is a good crew transport ship
-It has a lot of support abilities meant for exploration, salvaging, etc all in one convenient place.
With all this in mind, i get the idea that the cathedral is not meant to be a spearhead during battles and it is meant to just be left behind in a safe spot, while it produces Command Points incredibly quickly and sometimes engaging during low risk encounters, is this what the cathedral is meant to be played? this i how i play it at least.
I really want to like the Cathedral as a sort of "command ship" like it's tag "hub ship" would imply, but at times i find it hard to justify putting my best officer or the PC on a ship that i have to actively make it avoid big combat situations.
Sorry if it sounds like i'm ranting, i'm just leaving my feedback on something that i think could have an improvement, i also understand that balancing something so unique like this is really difficult.