12K mass limit per team, team of 3, 4K mass per ship - that means if they use anything heavier than basic hull, they will be a lot smaller than 40K blocks. Especially with any kind of turrets involved - and in an environment so hard-rigged for missile boats, no point defense and basic hull would be pretty much a suicide attempt.
The most important defense of a ship that size is mobility and a permajammer - but of course swarm missiles ignore jammers, guided missile turrets ignore jammers, and scanner pings put them on a cooldown long enough to acquire missile lock - also, in a locked sector, unless the weapon ranges are tampered with, there is no way to get out of range.
And to this, comes the fact that since the damage buffs to everything, a single 12K mass ship can equip a missile array, or even turrets, that with one shot, strip all shields from a 4-6K mass ship and do some armor damage too, unless the small one sacrifices mobility and offensive power in favor of trying to tank it - which is, again, very counterproductive as they will have even less chance of getting through to the big one without considerable firepower.
The thing is, with the current power and shielding balance settings, 12K mass is an actual threshold. Up until that, stat by stat, 1 large ship beats 2 or more small ships of equal total mass because it has a more efficient power grid (longer power strips, better power cap scaling) while the thrust scaling doesn't take such a heavy hit at that size yet. A 12K mass ship can, if built well, sustain a lot of systems that scale with mass(as they take a specific percent of the ship's mass) with its softcapped efficient power grid (jammer, ion, overdrive etc.).
It's actually above 12K mass where 1 million power/sec isn't enough any more. And that's where bigger ships lose their edge against smaller ones, because they need to dedicate a lot more blocks to their power generation, whether integrated or docked reactors, in order to keep scaling their firepower and also a lot more thrusters due to diminishing returns, if they intend to keep their mobility, which becomes a futile attempt as they scale upwards. Above 12K mass, 2 smaller ships can and will beat a large ship of equal total mass, because their power generation will be more efficient, and their better mobility (both thrust/mass ratio and turn ratios) will force the big one to rely on swarm missiles and turrets to deal damage, as they will very rarely get a direct line of sight to use beams, cannons or lock-on missiles.
