I still don't see how you can hit a destroyer with plasma cannon + 1 heavy blaster, considering the largest of destroyer hulls will only match your ship width. I actually tested this out and it was only just barely do-able when enemy ships had shields on, meaning the heavy blasters (super flux expensive and OP expensive weapons) were still useless 90% of the time when the destroyer turns off shields. Admittedly, this build worked a bit better against super wide dominators - blasters weren't useless. But they were still the most inefficient weapons for punching shields - you are paying 40% extra flux for shield damage; you'd get the same flux mileage if you used an assault chaingun on shields. I don't see anyone using assault chain guns for punching shields. And I couldn't even close the gap on my Apogee against any dominators fitted with sabots and Mark X autocannons; probably because I could not out flux your enemy with flux inefficient weapons.
The Eagle still remains objectively better as a combat vessel by your argument. An Eagle with SO + injectors can also match speeds with smaller ships is only a bit slower when you factor in maneuver thrusters. The Eagle is also about on par in terms of flux, when you account for the fact that it has 15 extra OP. The Eagle also can use HMG for its three front mounts; so instead of paying 1.44 flux/shielddmg, you are paying 0.2 flux/shielddmg. The Eagle also does not lack for armor penetration options with the 3 medium energy mounts and also the 3 ballistics mounts. It just does everything better.
The SO Eagle with Heavy Machine guns is better. I admit that raw kinetic damage can't be beat with 1920 hard flux per second on shields just from 3 weapons, compared to 1357 from say a plasma cannon + 2x IR + Pulse laser, or 1250 from a heavy blaster and plasma cannon. Since it can use Heavy Blaster(s) for its armor cracking, its just as effective in that role as the Apogee can be.
However, I mostly wanted to argue that an Apogee is not a bad early game combat ship. As I said, I've had decent luck with an SO Apogee early game. Given I tend to play Iron man, I've done a number of re-starts in my time.
For the Apogee and considering options on it, you have to take into account the fact that 36 Vents +700 base flux + SO means you 2120 flux to play with (with just the +10% OP skill, it gets better if you have some shield skills or flux skills). This is a weird regime where you've got more flux capacity than can sometimes be effectively used.
Heavy Blasters are not what I'd consider OP expensive given what they do. They're a large weapon effectively in a medium slot. They're definitely flux intensive, but an SO ship changes the calculus a lot.
Consider the following 3 weapons, and their damage per second per OP, assuming flux neutral usage on an SO ship.
A pulse laser is 10 OP, plus 333 flux for 303 damage. With SO, thats 10 OP + 16.65 OP of vents for 303 damage per second, or ~11.37 damage per second per OP at flux neutral cost.
A plasma cannon is 30 OP, plus 825 flux for 750 damage. Again with SO, thats 30 OP + 41.25 OP of vents for 10.52 damage per second per OP at flux neutral cost.
A heavy blaster is 12 OP, plus 720 flux for 500 damage. With SO, thats 12 OP + 36 OP of vents for 10.41 damage per second per OP at flux neutral cost.
There's about a ~1% difference in terms of total opportunity cost between a plasma cannon and a heavy blaster on an SO ship assuming flux dissipation is matched exactly against shields+weapons. If flux dissipation is greater than shields+weapons, then more damage is straight up better.
Given the OP opportunity costs a heavy blaster makes about as much sense on an SO ship as plasma cannon, except I can put 2 more heavy blasters on an Aurora, I can't put 1 or 2 more plasma cannons. Pulse lasers are about 9% more efficient against shields, but significantly worse against armor, and run into situations where I can't bring one side to bear, so again more dissipation than I can use. There's an argument to be made that one should replace the plasma cannon on the front with a heavy blaster and add hardened shields in my build, which I've also played around with.
In my runs, if I'm dealing with a ship with sabots I'll either try to bait them and back off, with active flares spammed already out, and back off if necessary. Alternatively, I'll armor tank them and rely on my weapons in the rear to do damage if the Plasma cannon gets taken out by ion damage. Against a completely kinetic/fragmentation dominator, I simply armor tank in 6 second chunks (with hold fire on) to let my hard flux drop to 0 while continuing to move around until I'm in the rear arc.
