Against shields, all hardpoints do full damage. Against hull, hardpoints may receive penalties against target's ship size.
Are ship sizes classified by the landing pad sizes e.g ships up to Cobra are small, up to Python are medium, Anaconda large?
Class ships by their landing pad size as that is the only time it matters in game whether you call a ship small medium or large.
Their class will let you know, I had someone explain it to me that essentially every distance between classes fractions, so 1 class difference is 3/4's damage, 2 is 1/2 and so on. So for example a side winder does less than 1/4 damage on a class 7 ship like a conda. Also the weapon hardpoint class matters too, all the smallest ships are class 1's, except the adder which has 1 class 2 on the top of the fuselage, and the vulture is a class 5 ship with class 3 hardpoints.
I don't know if that's 100% accurate or I explained it 100% accurately as they gave it to me, but they have over a thousand hours on the game and have been here since at least the beta so.
python is large ship that go to medium pad;p
So for any reason that matters it is a medium ship.
Where does it matter (affects gameplay) if you class it as a large ship?
Not sure where you are getting this information from. Damage has nothing to do with the size of your ship, it has to do with the size of your guns and the size of your target. So even if you fly a huge ship like the Anaconda, the Class 1 weapons on it still have a penalty against other large ships.
Class 1 weapons have a 33% damage penalty against medium ships and 66% damage penalty against large ships.
Class 2 weapons have no damage penalty against medium ships and a 33% damage penalty against large ships.
Class 3 and 4 weapons have no damage penalty.
The damage is applied only to hull, it does not affect damage to shield.
This is why if you are using a Beam for shields, projectile for Hull combo tactic it is better to use your smaller mounts for beam weapons, so when you are attacking hull you have less of a damage penalty.
(e.g. flying a Viper with two pulse lasers and two multi cannons, if you use the class 1 mounts for the lasers and class 2 for multi cannons, you lose no damage when hitting shield and lose less damage when hitting hull than having it the other way around. )
True but a class 1 will not deliver the same damage as a class 2 laser. So it will take longer to get through shields. But once through the hull should go quicker due to more class 2 damage and with less penality If i have this correct.
Not sure where you are getting this information from.
The stupid thing is that the Cobra is shorter in length than the Eagle.
python is large ship that go to medium pad;p
Where does it matter (affects gameplay) if you class it as a large ship?
Who is they?
Has anyone got a link to FDs posts on this (so I can read it first hand)?
If you shoot the hull with any medium weapon that isn't a railgun, plasma accelerator, or torpedo, you do less damage because the python is large.
One of many posts on the topic: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=127951&p=1961575&viewfull=1#post1961575
Rest of the thread also has some more info. There are also older threads on the topic.
Also, the FDL specifically has more resistance: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=120789&p=1873136&viewfull=1#post1873136
There is nothing there that says that the Python is a large ship.
It still isn't a large ship but I do concede that it may deal with damage like a large ship (due to higher quality materials).