When you equip a ship, you do so knowing its limitations and advantages. You know the trade off's when installing a module and you chose how to fly accordingly. If you get greedy and overload your ship to the point of it being slow with terrible shield coverage, thats a risk you knowing took as a commander.
Lighter ships having better performance makes perfect real world sense.
A wing of small ships (cobra sized) will still pick apart a slow heavy ship. would you suggest we make a Cobra turn like a Type-9 or a Type-9 turn like a Cobra, because its fair? Then whats the point of the entire mechanic of module classes and ship classes and hull space on large ships vs small ships if all ships handle roughly the same to limit advantages to one play style over another.
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We don't need to nuke game mechanics to make the game fair.... We need a Crime and punishment system that makes petty crime tough, so that only the most ardent game pirates will go full career as one. A real test of their skill, one that is actually rewarding if you have the skill. Cut out the casuals because they can't cut it. Get Gud and become a real pirate within a real justice system. The numbers of griefers will fall. Fame and infamy will have value and the spaceways will hopefully be alot safer in general.
Second one to mention Crime and Punishment. Why do you think they're mutually exclusive? Even if we do reduce their milslots, does that then give them the right to go around murdering others, just cos the playing field is a bit more level now than it was a month ago? No, of course not. We need what I'm proposing AND crime and punishment, they are neither mutually exclusive nor at odds as concepts.