From Hiruma Kai's analysis:
Perhaps what plagues the Eagle the most is lack of identity. You're right: it's clearly meant to be a mixture of beams and ballistics that is sort of mobile and sort of tanky. Many moons ago, your choices of attack Cruiser were: Venture, Falcon, Eagle, Apogee, Dominator, Aurora, and Doom. In that line-up, it is clearly the middle-of-the-road option. As more specialized cruisers have been added, the rather "vanilla" Eagle became less and less attractive to the point that we're having this discussion now.
Aurora, Doom, and Apogee have all been accused of being too powerful at various points in their life I can't recall any time where the Eagle was ever considered OP. It's always been the plumb line for "average" by which other ships are measured. The fact that the Eagle is now considered weak is a good indicator that power creep has set in, or if nothing else, ship design has evolved over the years. The more recently-added Cruisers (Eradicator, Fury, Champion, etc.) are all more specialized but they all clearly have a solid identity. "Equal mix of ballistics and energy" is all the Eagle has ever had and that's not enough to distinguish it from a pretty crowded Cruiser field now. Hence the idea of a fighter bay, but I don't deny it needs a speed increase, too.
So my Eagle patch notes would look something like:
- Added fighter bay
- Increased OP from 155 to 165
- Increased top speed from 50 to 60
But, I'd also be interested in swapping the positions of one (or all!) of the Medium Energies and Ballistics and seeing what that would do for the ship. If the Ballistics were in the turrets and Energies in the hardpoints, it would play very differently. The lion's share of the firepower could be directed other than forward and it would give the shorter-ranged Energies a bit more breathing room, especially assault energy weapon types. You could also actually mount Ballistic PD on the Eagle, which is a sneaky-large benefit.