You're largely correct except for a few points. The undisputed king, the holy meta FDL can absolutely be a one size fits all antiganker kill ship. See for recent example, myself, D'anque and a friend pulling a FDL where the pilot had cunningly asked support to reset his combat rank. My friend died, I ran out of ammo, and D'anque had to wake away. A properly flown, evasive FDL that does not joust a frag build has significant advantages and barring a mistake, will simply win such an engagement thanks to ammo constraints. The proper toolkit is all there to decimate basically anything if you're the superior pilot. No need to go to the level of counterbuild you're talking about.
You are absolutely correct in that we simply don't have to die unless we want to. Gankers will generally build to a strong shield, and importantly, strong armor underneath. We expect to have to shrug off NPC and even a degree of ATR and station fire. If we don't want to fight, or simply decide we're outmatched, we can just wake away. Victory is yours in that case, excepting the fact that we can just pop back up a few minutes later. Stopping us is more a matter of vigilance and conditional victory than the oft heard fantasies of blasting us out of the sky wholesale in the mighty corvette.
Unfortunately (for me!) the FdL is the one ship I completely despise in the game, more so than any other ship - because it is the meta (though the Kraits are catching up it seems - but at least they're still useful in roles other than combat), and I suppose because I've fallen victim to them countless times in my early days in Open, by players who solely use this ship, i.e. I've never seen them
once flying anything else. Whereas whenever I try to fight one, I seem to get nowhere fast, those shields... oof. It's my nemesis so to speak!
Think is though, we have 37 ships in the game, many of them combat oriented, and yet it's only (less than) a handful of ships that are up to the task, provided they're built it in a certain way, which is even duller (again, imo). For example, I have never seen a shieldless FdL with lasers only, certainly not flown by PvP pilots anyways, and I think that's a shame.
So I'm not blaming the players, but the game (sorry about this pun).
I wonder sometimes though about the "armour underneath" bit - most of my combat ships are hybrids, so I normally stay in the fight unless I'm outnumbered or being pummeled by nasty experimental effects that require the shield to be down - why is it that many run as soon as their shields are gone, while they're facing a meme Courier (2x Torps, 1x Packhounds) that, once torps have been fired, is not really capable of finishing the job unless I can take out their drives (and with some decent flying on their side they're easy enough to evade). Granted, not everyone behaves the same, but it is quite common all the same, at least in my experience.
As for the Corvette, what often strikes me about it is that it's the undisputed daddy in PvE in my fleet - it takes minutes until I need to pop the first SCB in a High CZ, against even one other player ship that comes down to mere seconds. Given the cost involved (which by now is meaningless, but it wasn't always like that, certainly not when I unlocked mine) you would expect the Federal Navy combat flagship to last a little longer against single mediums. From a game progression and balance perspective it doesn't make a lot of sense.
I know it is what it is, but it doesn't exactly encourage me to delve deeper into PvP, I have to admit.
