Told you it's only going to be a matter of time before the topic resurfaces.
So anyone got anything? Or is this bird still worthless?
The buffs didn't change the fundamental problem with the Eagle - it has too few mounts. You're basically looking at a 20 DP cruiser with three medium ballistics. For comparison you can get three medium ballistics out of a 9 DP Enforcer(obviously it has five mediums but not enough flux for that) And yes, Eagle is a cruiser so it gets more out of ITU, etc. I'm not saying you should be getting two Enforcers instead of one Eagle, I'm saying you should be getting any other combat cruiser instead of an Eagle.
With only three medium ballistics you're basically choosing: do I want an Eagle that can break shields but do next to nothing to armor or do I want an Eagle that can damage armor but which will never actually be able to get through the shields? I guess you could also try to mix them and end up not doing anything in general.
The three medium energy mounts? They do almost nothing in "support" role. Putting three Gravitons in them won't turn Maulers into anti-shield weapons. Putting three IR Autolances in them won't turn HVDs into anti-armor weapons(although this is still probably your best option) Putting three Ion Beams in them will turn off entire enemy ships, sure, but in a big battle more will only take their place and you're still relying on your other ships to kill them. Why get a ship that disables enemy ships hoping other ships will actually kill them when you can simply get more of the ships that kill and skip the "disable" part?
Two small missile mounts? Even with the Autoloader you can't rely on them for either anti-armor or anti-shield work, it's just too little. If Autoloader stacked with EMR/Missile Specialization then maybe.
The Lion's Guard version is interesting. If you go full energy damage you don't have to worry about having too few mounts, which is exactly what makes Hammerhead LG better than the regular Hammerhead(because regular Hammerhead has largely same problems as the Eagle), especially with Energy Bolt Coherer. But, ironically, Eagle LG doesn't actually get the EBC, making it basically just another hit-and-run high tech ship that only the player can use effectively. Although even with EBC, it would only be 100 range. It's noticeable on a destroyer but not so much on a cruiser.
I guess with beefier flux stats, Eagle can be a good SO flagship now or something. I wouldn't know, I don't care much about either SO or flagships.
To actually make Eagle work without changing its slot layout, we would need some "premium" medium ballistic weapons that can hit above their mount size - essentially a ballistic version of the Heavy Blaster(maybe mini-Mjolnir?) Then Eagle could leverage its great flux stats even with few mounts.