the game lacks an up-scaled version of the A-Kite -- a ship that's light, maneuverable, doesn't have the guns/stats to hold its own in a fair gunfight and absolutely cannot punch up, has proportionally low deployment cost for a ship that can't hold its own, but has enough small missile racks that it can do heinous murder to anything it gets an opening on a limited number of times, and more importantly, has more small missile slots than the kite.
There are lots of larger ships that are equally as capable of doing strikes as the kite but have proportionally better stats than it, and lots of missile-focused ships that trade several small slots for medium (which notably don't have any torpedos except the reaper (which often is not efficient to use, its a waste to use on a frigate) or large slots (which all auto-fire several torpedoes at once inaccurately which again is inefficient to use to use on a frigate) both of which makes the ship worse at punching down, but there's no ship that keeps the kite's focus on small torpedo racks but upscales it.
To wit, the only ship I can think of that could be easily modified into this without just straight up asking for a new ship would be an LP- version of the falcon, with its small energy turrets and medium ballistic turrets replaced with small missile hardpoints and its medium energy turrets replaced with medium ballistic turrets and increased top speed. It would be an adequately light puncher for its size to never just be a normal cruiser (you might as well deploy anything else if ur planning on shooting the badmans with ur guns, it's equally matched to a gemini in a guns-only fight & loses out to 2 hounds), while having enough torpedo mounts & maneuverability and increased survivability to justify not just bringing 7 kites instead.
Also you'd get to scream "LUDDS HAMMER!!!" as you slam 37(?) hammer torpedoes into a paragon's back
Additionally, a LP- version of the hammerhead that has its back 2 hybrids replaced with ballistics, its front 2 hybrids replaced with composites and gets either a missile autoforge & ill-advised modifications or maneuvering jets & built-in EMR hullmod.
Additionally, (& this one is just here for a larf), a LP- version of the sunder that has its large & medium energy mounts replaced with... nothing. It gets built-in hullmods of expanded cargo holds, efficiency overhaul, civilian-grade hull & ill-advised modifications and a description that mentions that while the luddic path proved incapable of modifying captured sunders into an effective warship that meets their standards of acceptability, they still strive to make use of them in some way.
