Sure Aurora is super fast but at some point I just need raw power and defense. Champion is just a straight up better ship, why bother with fancy flanking maneuvers when it can just obliterate the enemy's frontline. And if I want a fast flanker, both Fury and Odyssey are much better options efficiency wise (although I agree with Megas, Fury could use 5 or so more OP).
Aurora has significantly better flux stats than champion and the same shield efficiency, so I would argue it has better defenses shield-wise. Champion cannot catch fast ships and can't run away either. If you are fighting low tech fleets that might be less important, but if you are fighting remnants that might be critical e.g. the difference between getting run over by a hoard of remnant destroyers/cruisers and picking them off one by one. I haven't had too much trouble finishing things off with aurora, but I also like to run AMBs and reapers so I think my loadouts are more aimed at doing that.
I also think speed is invaluable for influencing the battle as the player. It lets you save your allies much more reliably, and engage the enemies you want to. I hate piloting slow ships and watching my allies die while I can't do anything about it. I personally would not pilot a champion or eradicator without SO because they are too slow. The AI can fly forward and fire all guns just fine, it's the fast ships where the player can maximize their impact on the fight. That's my philosophy anyway.
There's no universe where fury is a better flagship than aurora IMO. It just has less output in pretty much every way. Odyssey is obviously a better flagship, but hard to find. I've gotten bored of piloting odyssey anyway, so I generally look for other options these days.
Shields are identical, playstyle is nearly identical, only difference is that Aurora can go backwards with the ship system.
This is like saying that dominator and onslaught are redundant because they both have similar mount types, ships systems and play styles. In both cases one is bigger, has more/better mounts and stats and generally does
more, but also costs more.
Yeah I'm also not a huge fan how AI uses Phase lances but it works well as anti fighter and it cracks armour easily.
On an aurora, I'm not sure it would even be that good for anti fighter. The ship turns very quickly, so I feel it will spend a lot time missing since the AI does not attempt to maintain a stable platform or keep it on target when firing. In my experience, it will mostly just raise your flux levels for no benefit in AI hands, and it will very rarely actually hit armor where it is useful. It also has kinda low raw DPS making it pretty meh for hull damage IMO.
The reason I'm not using much EMP weapons is because I want my fleet to quickly take out opponents, not play with them until they go boom.
Ion pulser is a solid burst damage weapon for anti-shield even ignoring ion damage. It's definitely not just utility. 1000 burst DPS is nothing to sneeze at and it fits very nicely into flux budgets IMO. Also consider that once the enemy weapons are offline, you can spend all your flux on dealing damage instead of having to spend some on shields to defend yourself. In my experience, Aurora performs better with an ion pulser.
And I mean Omega weapons are great on pretty much all high tech ships, don't get what does that have to do with the topic. Once you get to that point in the game you don't even care for ship losses. I actually tried a [REDACTED] loadout on it once in a custom mission, it's crazy good yeah, but that's so late in the game it's irrelevant to the discussion.
You can get a few super early from the alpha site cache. I always check the cache as soon as possible, it's just a few remnant destroyers and frigates iirc so very easy to clear. If you hit 2x mini pulser + cryo blaster, you have a super-powered aurora immediately (and there are plenty of other decent combos since almost every small and medium omega weapon is good on aurora). Obviously not something you will do every game, but something that can happen reasonably often. I also actually think a jacked omega aurora is a viable late game flagship that can get good value compared to other options, even if it is not the optimal choice.
Also, just to be clear, I'm not against an aurora buff, I just think it's not completely useless right now. IMO it's mostly just overshadowed by ships like odyssey and doom as flagships, and the progression is much too fast for a mid game flagship niche to really exist.