@ Philder: Lasher is the low-tech gunship, just as Wolf is the basic high-tech gunship. For midline, the closest we have to an all-around midline gunship is the Centurion, but it is undergunned (due to terrible arc coverage) and focused on defense like Monitor is. The only time Centurion seems competitive with early-game Lasher with autocannons and other similar stock frigates is when it constantly advances like The Wall while constantly firing dual railguns at its target.
For Brawler to be a viable all-purpose gunship, without any PD-whatsoever, it needs its front-shields changed to omni to help defend against Salamanders and other flankers. Salamanders utterly cripple Brawlers because they have no way to stop them. Even with Omni shield, it might not be enough to help fend off against fighters.
Damper Field was alright on Brawler when it was 66% or more (for playership use, not on ubiquitous low-level enemy fodder). But at 50% - while nearly everything else is disabled - Damper Field is useless on frigates. Centurion and Brawler take too much damage even while Damper Field is on.
Centurion could be made into a decent gunship, it needs wider arcs to allow three turrets to shoot things, at least as well as Wayfarer. (With pre 0.8 skills, Wayfarer was a better combat ship than Centurion.) It also needs its signature Damper Field restored to its former glory (and removed from ships that stole the Centurion's gimmick). 75% absorption was not bad on Centurion, who needed it, and Centurion was rare too (and used mostly by Hegemony), though not as rare as Monitor. It was when other more common ships poached it and Damper Field needed to be weakened. First, on Brawler because they were commonly used by early game enemies when player did not enough ships to steamroll them, then Mora which stacked with its high armor very well. Now, Damper Field is useless on anything other than Mora. It is generally better to vent than use Damper Field on the frigates.
However, I would not mind a new midline frigate-sized murder-wedge, like a mini-Eagle or a bigger super-Kite that can brawl.
IMO the 'tanky' frigates are balanced fine as they are. They're distinctly tankier than other frigates and can serve that role well against other frigates. What? You want to use frigate sized costs to tank against destroyers and cruisers? And combine that with frigate speeds? Uh...yeah that's balanced T_T
Such walls may be fine as support, but as an all-purpose gunship, it is useless because the enemy AI is so cowardly. If your offense is bad, and the enemy turtles, then it is a stalemate at first, then everyone dies due to both sides running out of CR.
Midline is full of weird specialist and support frigates, but there is not an all-purpose midline frigate like Hammerhead is for destroyers, Falcon and Eagle for cruisers, and Conquest is for capitals. Conquest is finally decent in the 0.8 era, maybe it can take slightly more durability boost (mainly shields so it does not outright overload to spike damage that does not overload other ships), but it is almost at a good place now. For low-tech, there is Lasher. For high-tech, there are Wolf and Tempest.
And Damper Field should either scale inversely with ship size or Mora should lose it. Better arcs on the Centurion could help too, same goes for the Wayfarer. Most of the new frigates seem to be going for the "360 degrees small turret coverage" and the only one it works for is Scarab and the only reason for that is because it can bring 5 of them to bear in the front.
It only works for Scarab because of Temporal Shell that lets Scarab force battles and dodge bullets. However, it cannot support IR Pulse Lasers on all five front mounts due to lack of flux stats. So far, the out-of-the-box 0.7 era Experimental(?) variant is probably one of, if not, the best loadout for Scarab. One IR Pulse for damage, one ion cannon to disable, one AM Blaster to overload shields, and missiles to finish off enemies.
