Did some tests with Talon + [variable fighter] vs Lasher CS variant (decent 360 degree protection without crazy fighter-eating power for its DP, such as the Tempest's drones or the Omen's ship system). Talons used in all tests as a Carrier used was Condor, no ship-based weapons were used, Expanded Deck Crew installed to help maintain pressure. Fighters deployed in waves unless it seemed beneficial to continue pressure. Timer started upon first shot fired in anger.
vs Lasher (Close-Support Variant)
1x Normal Gladius, 1x Talon: Lasher KIA, 1m32s
1x NF Gladius, 1x Talon: Lasher KIA, 40s
1x Thunder, 1x Talon: Lasher KIA, 1m23s (Many ion cannon shots completely missed the hull in the opening 30s, so I'm guessing this would be several seconds to dozens of seconds lower had they connected)
1x Broadsword, 1x Talon: Lasher KIA, 1m11s
1x Lux, 1x Talon: Lasher KIA, 46s
1x Spark, 1x Talon: Lasher KIA, 37s
2x Talons: Lasher KIA, 3m07s
1x Talon, 1x Wasp: 2m03s (would likely have been ~20 seconds shorter, but the Lasher pulled off a hail mary at the last second and forced the carrier to regroup for a final wave)
1x Talon, 1x Claw: 1m14s
The quick and dirty test results roughly mirrors my experience in the campaigns.
The standard Gladius was the 3rd worst performer in the test, beating only the Wasp group by ~30 seconds and the twin Talon group by nearly half the time. Sparks were the best in time (to probably nobody's surprise), the Lux wasn't too far behind, and the Gladius NF was somewhere in between the Remnant craft.
As for the worst performer, the 2x Talon group really suffered from a combination of lacking any proper shield-cracking weapons and no method of suppressing point-defense systems, leaving the Talons having to hope that they score lucky strikes on the rear with their Swarmers and eventually chew up the hull with their Vulcans. As one might extrapolate from the results, this was a slow and painful process.
Other than that, the Gladius did not perform all that much better than the 2nd-worst performer, the Wasp+Talon group, which performed somewhat better than I anticipated (and likely would have been on par with the Gladius, had the Lasher not been lucky). The original Gladius would fire its first 3-4 shots immediately at the Lasher, while its shields are up, and immediately become flux-throttled. By the time its MGs had brought the Lasher's shields down, the IR Pulse Laser itself was locked out of being usefully applied against the armor plating to any meaningful extent. The Gladius ultimately performed (like I keep saying) as a worse Broadsword as a result.
The Broadsword performed quite well in conjunction with the Talon, keeping the shields suppressed significantly better than the Gladius could and while being a far, far better distraction. As a result, the Broadsword shaved off tens of seconds despite having worse anti-armor capabilities. Except for the absolute swiftest Frigates, I'd prefer Broadswords as a supplement over the Gladius if I have to fight frigates, along with almost everything else.
Thunders performed decently enough as shield suppressors, but their real utility was in suppressing the Lasher's guns and engines, letting the fighter Swarmers hit the Lasher's rear more consistently to crack its armor and eventually tear it apart. Claws performed similarly, but also seemed to be significantly more accurate in actually hitting the Lasher with its ion cannon. Specifically for the suppression thing, I'd prefer either fighter over the Gladius for engaging frigates, especially since a frigate with an engine burnout is often a dead frigate. Either wing (but especially Thunders) is particularly effective at harassing phase frigates, as well as most other targets.
The upgraded Gladius NF performed significantly better than the original, naturally. That's somewhat unavoidable when the laser can actually be applied. Despite the massive difference between the two, it wasn't quite enough for the Gladius to take the top spot against this particular foe. Interestingly, it performed only slightly better than the Lux, which has the equivalent Energy firepower but lacks any sort of ballistic follow-up. Still, its overall performance was a bit much for 10 OP, though it's not mind-blowingly insane as previously suggested. For such a theoretical Gladius NF, 12-15 OP might be more appropriate.
One odd thing to note was that the Flare systems were only applied sporadically against the Lasher. I'm not sure if the fighter groups just didn't consider the Lasher to be a big enough "threat" to use them most of the time? When they were used, the Broadsword and Lux wings provided considerable distraction for the Talons and their missiles. The Gladius, eh... it wasn't nothing, but it wasn't anything approaching what could be described as decisive.
After this test, while I still think a NF Gladius is closer to an effective and fun fighter wing, (and certainly don't think the Gladius needs extreme flux throttling for balance), it's certainly overtuned for 10 OP.
While useful as a test platform, I suppose the "NF Gladius" isn't really vanilla-esque. Most of the vanilla fighters do have some sort of flux management, and making them all suddenly have that hullmod isn't going to fly.
With the tests I've done in mind, if I were in charge of changing the Gladius while keeping vanilla in mind, balancing it around the 10 OP region, I think I'd do two things:
1. Replace the IR Pulse laser with the High Delay variant. It's far less flux hungry and is supposed to be the fighter-based variant, anyways.
2. Significantly upgrade the flux dissipation rate, but not so much as to make dissipation completely trivial. 75-80 dissipation seems like a good spot for a first draft.
With those changes, the new Gladius would "lose" its initial burst of ~3 laser shots in a second (which in my experience was functionally irrelevant). It would instead take 2 seconds to accomplish the same thing. More importantly, the new Gladius would be able to keep its main gun in play for quite a bit longer and, perhaps more importantly, the inevitable flux throttling wouldn't be nearly as painful as it currently is. (Current flux throttling with all guns firing reduces the IR Pulse Laser's output to ~8% of the original, whereas the current suggestion reduces the new High Delay model's output to about 50%.).
The overall sustained firepower would increase due to the extra dissipation, of course, but I really think it needs that to have a truly useful niche in comparison to the rest of the lineup. The initial 1 second burst is not quite as strong due to the rate-of-fire reduction, but I the tradeoff would end up more than worth it. I've not tested it myself, but I imagine such a redesigned Gladius would have a place in my fleets.
Wow, that ended up much longer than I expected. My apologies and congratulations on all of you who managed to get this far.
That's about all I want to say on the subject. I'm all gladius'd out for now, and I'll be shelving them in my campaigns as well until they see some sort of revision. Unless someone's got an extremely convincing idea for yet another test, I'd rather focus my energy on fiddling with mod-making things like I was set on doing originally.