Not very well with needlers.
Yes, HAC/Railguns or similar mod weapons work better with single Hellbore.
Maybe that's true for big kinetics, but small ones suffer greatly against the 5% armor floor. It's even worse against ships with officers, because the +150 armor and -50% KE effectiveness perks do a great job at keeping KE damage permanently low. It's not worth spending all that extra time plugging KEs against the hull, you still want energy or anti-armor weapons or torpedoes to score the kills.
AI doesn't intentionally armor tank until it's at high flux (not consistently anyway). By which point it's using only small portion of it's dissipation to fight back, so even if you prolong this phase somewhat it's not a big problem. And AI isn't going to decide to vent when faced with Hellbore either.
Plus a ship using Hellbore + many kinetics has to be either a cruiser or capital to have all necessary slots. Which means mandatory officer with Ordnance Expertise and Target Analysis. While enemy fleets work under same 10 officers limit and usually prefer to use officers on larger ships, same as player. Frigate with all armor skill is just unlikely, and not big enough threat even if it happens.
