The idea is that in a 1v1, or 1v2, in this case, the ship would be able to outmaneuver enemy vessels, while delivering strikes from beyond their weapons range, then finishing them off by either a long range missile or moving in with the cannon.
Really, it was designed around destroying Vaygr-built ships, which are designed to sit there and tank enemy fire, while giving the that and more back. It's a good, effective principle, given their results with the system. However, they are relatively slow, which means outmaneuvering them leaves only the turrets to destroy, which a missile would make short work of. I noticed from observing their ships up close (getting mauled by an Intruder in a 20k mass ship, Leanson knows the one. :p) that they use the stop effect quite a bit. To counter that, I built the ship with very disproportional engines for its size. I cut back on shielding, since I could more easily evade cannon fire and rapid-fire beams are much shorter range than the ones I use. End result of removing the shielding and going for agility is a group of ships that are absolutely horrible at fleet engagements, but work quite well against what was, at the time, our main threat. The Rockhopper class was thrown up in a week and was a shot in the dark as to what it'd need to counter to be effective, so naturally, it only got one kill during a 1v1.