Hey, just would like to say thanks for the detailed feedback. It's really gratifying to see that I've finally managed to nerf things to a state where the Mayorate can be considered "underwhelming" at times. It looks like Dark and I nerfed things WAYYY too hard and I may need to buff things back up again.
A few comments about your criticism:
-Del Azarchel - going to completely disagree with you on this one. The built in gun is 1k kinetic damage per shot, and the missile launchers are fabulous if you kit the smaller ones out with the same type of missile and put MIRVS or nukes in the large slots.
-The Mayorate shield generators comment - I've sorta been planning to redo all of the Mayorate ships with a faction-specific shield generator. As currently balanced, you need to drop shields if you really want to dish out the pain. Armor is slightly above average across the board so you can generally take the return fire while you crumple their shields. Upkeep is twice as high as it should be as a cheap way of forcing everyone to use stabilized shields (otherwise equipping it would let you shield tank too well).
-Graser PD - might have nerfed this slightly too hard. Used to be on par with LR PD lasers.
-Graser - also may have nerfed this too hard. Used to punch through shields rather well.
-Tornado AM and battery- Good point, used to be much better before the AI changes (used to be able to wipe a few frigates at a time
), I could probably increase the ammo to 5 and 10-15 respectively.
-Laserheads - does more damage than piliums and crunches shields of multiple ships nicely. I'll see about decreasing the blast range to handle FF better, although the better MIRV behavior in the next update might also give me an FF-free laserhead as well.