Hmm. I tend to think of this as a safety-net for newbies, mainly. If they lose their initial fleet in the Tutorial... instead of trying again a couple of times, dying again, then rage-quitting and announcing to the world that the game's too hard... give them the ability to rebuild for almost free.
Sure, ship-for-ship, their junk army will get thrashed by even (D) stuff. But it's so cheap, they can afford a swarm army that can get them through early-game problems and at least feel like they're still in the game.
The alternatives to fixing the initial difficulty ramp are pretty well-understood; either give newbies a decent fleet on Easy (or just make a new mode called, "First-Time Player", even) and probably fix the way that a new fleet is generated for a player after they've been defeated, so that losing doesn't feel like the end, for new players who've been playing their first couple of hours and suddenly died. That's a pretty easy fix, it won't break lategame mechanics, and we've already had a couple of mods go that way, but nothing official. We're getting closer to the end of the major features, and it's really time to start figuring out how the curve's going to work.
None of this stuff affects expert players, I think. The ships and guns would be so weak that the only reason they aren't newbie traps is that they're free or close enough and, being free, they won't drag down newbies, like the Light Mortar and the other major newbie-trap guns do.
Experts will still gravitate towards the Right Answers, presuming that stuff isn't fixed; if the next build is about making enough money to play Space Emperor, then they'll be taking the shortest route, and junk armies aren't it. As it is, I never keep (D) stuff around except during the earliest phases of a new game; I repair pretty much anything I'm going to keep, because it's a little more edge. I wouldn't mind having a disposable army early on, but it probably wouldn't matter a whole lot past that, other than as a way to meatshield briefly.
Anyhow, I'm willing to put a little time into building a basic mod for this stuff, to try it out.
Anything is too good for zero-OP, zero-Flux. Many currently decent ships build leave empty slots - would be a no-brainer to put a totally free weapon there.
So what? I mean, what harm does that do, so long as there are well-optimized Variants that also take advantage of that?
Trash guns (if they were to exist) should be exact opposite of that: either cost too much OP for what they do, or have abysmal flux efficiency.
So, basically, more Light ACs, Light Mortars, etc.?
The game's already full of things that nobody should be using if they have a choice. And it would be completely horrible for newbies, who obviously already waste a lot of time on the stuff that's just sub-optimal, rather than doing a conscious beeline for decent gear.
If you're a competent player,
money is the least-important resource. One of the big pushes in the next build is to finally give players a money-sink that matters; I can't wait. But it's stuff that won't pertain to newbies who are trying to survive on System Bounties because they're not skilled enough to do anything else yet.