Why not? You need only several seconds of maintained fire to fry Eagle or Sidewinder, several seconds to take out Cobras or Vipers shields. Meaning that all what is required is to stay that little time in firing position. I doubt that it is going to be difficult. So I do not see any issues. A large ship being as manoeuvrable as all smaller ships is an issue though.
Then its shield could have easily stayed as strong as it is with the nerf to mobility, as with the changes it would need it more then ever. Its not like the a viper cannot down its shields as it is right now. If the python is not none stop boosting as it is, then it cant turn fast enough for the life of it. Since its none stop boosting, less pips into system. A6 shields are going to become mandatory to make this ship serviceable in a fight. A simple change to how the shield strength scales with grade could have solved its extreme tank if it was really needed.
Top speed was totally un-needed to change to such a degree. Its not that fast of a ship to begin with. Killing off 70 m\ps is not the answer in addition to its turn rates.
In addition to the changes to shield cells on top of the slash fest. A5 cells can barely fill over a ring currently, A6 are not much better. This is either going to get worse all around, or two A6 will become mandatory. That would kill its role as a trader, so its out of the question.
What we have is a slash to the ship across the board, turning all of its current strong points into something worse then the Anaconda all around, with nothing planned anytime soon to replace it as a combat ship for its size and price range. Guess I should start grinding out the 200 million to make the Anaconda serviceable.
So what if its hard points are good if you cant turn to hit anything or take enough damage to complete a turn? May as well slash the class 3's while we are at it. The ship is going to become a dedicated trader and not much else, witch is totally ironic considering some 17 million later(About a days worth of trade in a 7) the type 9 invalidates it. Again so what if you cannot land on medium pads or defend your self nearly as well? Type 9 does not need either of those things.
The Viper and Asp did not get hit nearly as hard as what the Python is about to go through.
Why play to fight in these big ships when they are all bad at everything outside of trading? Adding more small fighters is not going to change the fact that the game dies off for progression as a bounty hunter once you hit the Asp.
Yes the Python is supposed to be a trader, but bloody hell give us a warship to work with instead of these heavy traders and super haulers already. Adding another variety of Cobra is not gonna cut it.