\"was basically surgery with a sledgehammer it was a giant change out of the blue with what seemed like very little testing beforehand\"
The game is an alpha. This is -exactly- the phase during which sledgehammer grade change are likely to be applied with little testing, because this is literally the one phase where they will be meant to be tested.
People built themselves expectations of what the game \"should\" be in what is still technically completely \"tentative\" iterations of rulesets, stats and ideas that can be prone to be modified entirely in sweeping change with little warning if the developper(s) feels that finally the idea didn\'t correspond in practice to what they felt it was like on paper.
For but one example, Starbound(another sandbox game, but this time a platformer) once had the concept of the players starting out in a large abandonned space stations from which they could launch themselves with a dropship to explore procedurally generated worlds. A station that could be modified with many modules to serves as player\'s base.
Suddenly, without warning as the game still worked(and still are) on the game, mentions of the space stations absolutely ceased. There was no more space stations, but this time a spaceship(the old dropship upgraded) that could be upgraded with additional room to still serve as a player\'s base, albeit a mobile one that would combine both space station and dropship features. Sometimes post-release they are also musing with the idea of FTL-like combat.
Then again, without warning, as a lone developper\'s special weekend project where he dusted off the old space station files to test an idea, the space station -might- make a return this time not as a lone player\'s base, but as structure players that are part of a clan on a server could purchases as a clan-base/house.
... and development is such that even this could be dropped at any times, without warning, if they feel the results are unsatisfactory to their vision of the game. And they are technically a game which might possibly be already in beta even if not an open one, or at the very least past what people conventionally see as the \"alpha\" phase.
Starmade in comparison is still in alpha. And if the developper made such a change, maybe it indeed reflect that the devs -do- intend bigger spaceships to outperform other ships in all areas except maneuverability. Remember that at the end of the day, this is a game in development(and very early development) that -will- be prone to drastic changes to better represent what game the developper want to present.
