Not sure I can really agree with this unless the FAS got a speed, jumprange and slight capacity bump. The ship lines don't really give apples to apples comparisons. Sure they fight about the same, anything else and the clipper wins.
Ah. It feels to me like you are trying to compare apples to oranges.
Federation have very different values to Imperial, the same as again they are both very different to Alliance.
I would say you cannot truly compare their ships like that, as they do not share an ideology behind their design. they are built to do very different things, in very different ways, by very different peoples.
And then we can also add in the truly independent ships and where they fit in the grand scheme of things.
But that is just the way I see it.
The opposing superpowers military vehicles, despite their vastly differing dorctrines, would end up converging either in similar capabilities, or in counters to each others approach. Take a look at the cold war and Nato's military hardware compared to soviet equipment...
Soviet Tanks were heavily armoured, had a turret, and varying weapons - so did Nato tanks. Slight nuance being that Nato tanks had higher technology weapons, russian tanks were more numerous and more heavily armoured. Would be a close run fight on a battlefield.
Nato submarines were quiet, deep water capable, carried a mix of missiles and torpedoes and were either diesel-electric or nuclear powered, so were soviet submarines. Was a very close run thing in the deapths.
Airpower is where we have the biggest divergence, Nato favoured setalth and beyond visual range weapons systems in the air, russia favoured strong Anti Aircraft defences such as SAM's and highly manouevrable fighters geared for dogfighting. So the Nato Jets would shoot down the Soviet jets before the Soviets had close enough to play to their strengths, but most Nato Jets, except the stealth bombers B2 and F117a, would likely never get past enough of the sam sites to get deep enough into soviet territory to encounter soviet jets. Would most likely be a stalemate in the air.
So if Nato and the soviets had mostly convergent but some countering designs of weapons systems its reasonable to expect imperials and federals to have similar levels of capabilities in their ships. Even if its not, for the sake of balance, or game play, there ought to be a relative comparability between the powers ships.
I like the Cutter / Corvette application of divergent approaches creating different ships of similar power levels focussed on different roles, on balance they are fair. Even the courier for all its diminutive proportions and comparatively weak firepower relative to the fed three medium ships, balances this with superior shielding, speed and agility, so its fair.
But the clipper has too many draw backs, large pad, fragile hull, pathetic shields (courier and vulture have stronger shields than a clipper), significantly less firepower, horific weapons convergence, smaller power distributor, mediocre cargo capacity (less than a python or Krait). The clipper ought to balance against a FGS and a FAS. It's outgunned by FGS & Krait & Python. It's got less shields than Krait & Python, but only slightly more than FGS, whcih is using class 6 shield on class 7 distributor, vs clipper class 7 shields on class 6 distributor, drastically hurting its relative recharge rates, meaning effectively weaker, or at least less usable shields on the clipper. The FAS can keep up with a clipper in a twisty fight, and the clipper is only slightly faster at running away. The clippers cargo capacity is less than a Python, only slightly more than a krait. Krait Mkii and FGS have the ability to launch SLF's.
With the FGS having, bigger distributor, additional hardpoints, and SLF capability it is totally over powered compared to a clipper.
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