I think rather that the ludicrous speed one can come up with now and call 500+ speeds slow is the problem.
Your basic stock vessel goes between 250-350 with boost at 2 pips so anything that manages to go over 400-500 IS a speed demon.
Nobody in the PvP community (or the part of the PvE community that likes “maxed out” ships) cares about stock numbers other than base values that translate into the ‘final’ engineered numbers.
I’m really speaking to them here.
400-500 is NOT fast.
For example, most PvP viable ships do 530+. That puts the Krait, Chief, FAS, FDL, Clipper, Phantom, and Mamba all in the 525-610 range.
That’s too many ships in the same or similar speed range.
Their other characteristics differ wildly, but the speed is “samey”.
The Mamba was supposed to be the fastest of them all.
It’s not. The Phantom and Clipper are a bit faster at 605 and 610 on average respectively.
That’s the point.