The Paragon is an energy weapon boat, and that's always meant it's range isn't going to be incredible. The ATC only brings energy weapons up enough to compete with ballistics, not surpass them. Try doing the math on Atlas IIs armed with Gauss in comparison, say.
That Fortress Shield is an outright hard counter to Lidar Array is much more relevant to asking which of them is more advanced than the other, I'd say.
Paragon, with it's ATC, is the current Range King in the game. No other ship can fire as far as Paragon can.
And for Atlas Mk.II comparison, sure.
Atlas Mk.II has Accelerated Ammo Feeder as it's ability, which does increase RoF, but does not increase weapon range. Best what Atlas Mk.II can have, is Integrated Targeting Unit, with +60% range. With this, and equipping 2x Gauss Cannons on it (since it's max what it can take in terms of Large Ballistics), it gains 1920 range for it's Gauss Cannons. 1920 range is still less than 2000 range for Tachyon Lance and High Intensity Laser, when the latter two are put on Paragon.
If LIDAR is so godly (nevermind that it gets beat by the ATC ship), why does no other ship use it? Because it takes a dreadnought-sized hull to fit it - just look how far apart the laser turrets are!
That giant space requirement is what makes Invictus, and thus LIDAR, obsolete. It makes Invictus guzzle fuel, take literal tons of crew, and prevents it from mounting a shield generator. Even Atlas Mk.2 has a shield.
Why no other ship uses Lidar Array? Perhaps because it isn't in the game as of yet? Who knows, maybe in the future, we may see more ships with Lidar Array.
Invictus'es fuel consumption and crew requirement doesn't matter when it is part of the AI controlled fleet, opposing your fleet. These two are only minor hindrances when Invictus is in player's fleet. And regarding it's lack of shields, it has armor to counter that, and plethora of it as well. 10.000 as a base, which can be greatly increased with hullmods. (E.g Armored Weapon Mounts, besides toughening up weapons, also add +10% armor, so extra 1000 armor, to total of 11.000 armor).
2nd best ship, in terms of armor rating of 1750 is Onslaught. After that, at 1700 armor rating, comes Guardian. And next, at 1500 armor rating, are several ships (Prometheus Mk.II, Legion, Paragon, Ziggurat, Radiant and Tesseract).
Also, it has the highest hull integrity as well, 40.000. That's at least twice of what is currently in-game. Next in line, with half of that, at 20.000 hull integrity, are: Onslaught, Radiant and Guardian. Step down from those, at 18.000 hull integrity is Paragon.
And when putting on Reinforced Bulkheads, that give +40% hull, that adds another 16.000, to the total of 56.000 hull integrity.
So, Invictus doesn't need shields at all, with this kind of armor amount and hull integrity. Also, lack of shields actually helps Invictus, since it can dissipate flux at all times. While all other ships with shields, need to drop their shields, to dissipate flux.
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Lore wise, i'd paint Invictus green and put it into Derlict class, since it fits well between Rapart and Guardian. It's essentially Rampart's big brother. A flying box without shields, with loads of ballistic mounts. And it being outdated, just like all other Derlicts are, makes the fit even more snug.
Because range isn't the sole determinant of the quality of ship design - if that were the case, then most low tech ships at equivalent size classes would be simply "better" than most high tech ships, full stop. It's an extremely facile avenue for analysis.
I'm not surprised that in real testing the Paragon eats the Invictus alive, because Lidar Array takes up the active system slot, while the Paragon is equipped with both ATC and Fortress Shield. The Paragon could simply activate Fortress Shield to absorb the Lidar Array output while it's active, then once Lidar has been depleted the Paragon will easily pummel the Invictus from way beyond the Invictus's pitiful +25% passive range. In fact, beam Paragons still outrange the Invictus even with Lidar active for any weapon other than Gauss, and I highly doubt the Invictus has the flux to sustain 4x Gauss with 3x Lidar acceleration for any decent length of time (which, again, would just be easily absorbed by Fortress Shield anyway). It's quite likely that the Invictus will have trouble managing 4x Gauss even before Lidar - the posted build has less than 50% of the dissipation required for 4x Gauss alone, before even considering the other large mounts.
Personally I'm waiting to see what the flux and system uptime situation (max charges, charge replenishment, duration/cooldown, etc.) turns out to be for Invictus before passing judgement, since that's going to have a huge impact on what kind of damage output the Invictus is actually capable of sustaining across the entire battle. The Invictus obviously has considerable burst potential, but might require tons of support to keep it covered if it needs to constantly vent. Right now the Invictus reminds me of an overgrown Atlas Mk.II: amazing on paper, but tactically problematic during actual deployment. It's hard to measure how DP-efficient the Invictus would be without actually seeing how much sustained DPS it's capable of and how much fleet support it requires.
Low tech ships have higher armor/hull rating of the three classes, while high tech ships are fastest of the three, while being most fragile. And mid-line are between the two. What is valued with the ship, is dependent on personal play style. Some people like to be up close, tanking shots. Others prefer to kite at outskirts and out range opponents.
Almost all ships can have either DTC or ITU, to increase their weapon range. With this, there is little difference which ship to use. Except Paragon and it's unique ATC. Making Paragon ideal for those, who value weapon range the most.
Now, if i'd want firepower, i could use Onslaught or when i want even more energy firepower, i can use Radiant, since it can hold 5x Tachyon Lances, one more than Paragon. But i prefer to play on extreme ranges, making Paragon ideal for my play style.
Btw, it would be nice, if, in the future, players could change out the default Active Ability and choose another one, more fitting to their play style (e.g to me, Paragon's Fortress Shield is completely useless and i don't use it at all. I even rarely use shields, since i have range advantage. That is, until Invictus comes and out ranges my Paragon).
Invictus'es flux amount and dissipation, could be it's only saving grace, regarding the sustainability of Gauss Cannons. But we don't know that as of yet, since Invictus is still under construction and it's stats may change prior to launch.
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