The balance of large ships to small ships is tricky, because if we made larger ships just as powerful as all their components combined
I saw your point in the rest of the post, but that starting, c\'mon, who are you kidding, you perfectly now that splitting your ship in half, or even one of a big ship\'s canon array in two will actually make it better and more powerful than the big/full one, as in DPS, damage in a single shot, same for shields now, doubling the ammount of shield blocks only gives about 20% increase, which is multiple times less than what a smaller ship gets from them, which is way too strict, especially counting the recovery time. When under fire (big ships can\'t really avoid bullets... but for some seconds, it can happen), you could get at most few seconds with no fire on you, but for what, literally 0.5 % of your shield capacity ?
But, I never said the change was wrong, the recovery addition is ok as well as the shield nerf is logic, but the curve tends to 0 way earlier than it should, it\'s too strict, same as the new complaints lately of how a 200 mass ship turns just 1 second faster than an 800 mass ship, because of the curve is only felt between 0 and 200-300. Same for shields, after a certain level, going from 3mill to 6 mill total shield blocks only add freaking 30k of regen to the previous 100k of regen, which is too sad.
Turrets are nerfed and can\'t actually hit a fighter (saying about real fighters of ~100 mass, not those 3000 mass frigates), there are no new cannons (yet, so for sure you didn\'t had that in mind a month ago) and what powerdrain beams actually matter for, except vs stealth fighters, they won\'t kill anything. So yeah, rely on a dumbfire AI rather than on your own skills, because that\'s the only excuse for calling it a \"balance\".