Ship class standards and some deviations can be too big

[fast escarp]

Some examples: Roswell family, they cross class standards, Oversized Rosfire's stats don't go along the lines of the ones in the Heavy Fighter part of the family.
Low tech Cadet ships used to have speed 70 before rework and really don't need 7 weapon slots, infect giving most HF more than 5 Weapon slots is wasteful and wastes the potential for stat spreads that would be more useful for more classes. I don't deny that there shouldn't be options with high weapon slots or vice versa, but that seem too commonly too high.
When perks were explained to me giving a ship an extra weapon or aug slot also consumes perks from this budget and the rarity decides how many perks the ship gets which gets it to differentiate itself from the baseline of the ship class according to tech level as well as subtypes adding some further modifications.
Perk wise you could generate perks off some extra weapon slots on some HFs across the levels in order to boost other stats. I suggest some extra speed on the Cadet ships and suggest a case by case judgement on each HF as well a a look at the full picture of availability of this extra variation so it's spread enough across the tech levels.
Particularly Sniper specialized HFs should be stealthy and not need many weapon slots, I'm just suggesting some non stealthy options having less as well.
Wiki lists Monochrome Tinge gets no aug, I hope that's an error.
Some HFs have less than 3 augs but I never see any with like before the rework which helped increasing the variety.

Also I suspect that no ship option with one aug would ever really be considered for practical use. As you know since the Cargo System there's an abundance of Hull space at least on most SF and capitalships, I'm suggesting the 1 aug christmas ships, 1 aug voltage, 1 aug Phunka+Helga family and Goldenboy Pyrite, these ships should have at least 2 augs or 3, the extra hullspace related perks aren't useful enough on SFs outside of Trade bots due to the cargo system in most cases.

And Ampage, Asteroid Freighter and any else I've missed

Ship class standards and some deviations can be too extreme

[vital saffron]

Heavy fighters are intended f9r use by berserkers or snipers, so half of them are designed with the expectation they are going to need double the weapons slots the other half have.

I would actually very much prefer to get rid of the extra hull on support feeighters and give them strong shield bonuses and manuvering bonuses instead. This would make decent combat bots while increasong their overall utility.

[fast escarp]

To this I'd add some resistances to some SFs, not the same standards as before necessarily but the pax family always had resistances.
Oversized Rosfire needs resistances to feel somewhat related to the HF variants and more cases can be argued for.

You'd probably have reached a sweet spot in regards to SF once other classes can consider using them for some builds as combat bots, previously it usually was due to a combination of resistances and good stats and bonuses.

[fast escarp]

Ship class standards and some deviations can be too big

@valid mauve Thus things I say also become buried, I don't know if anyone would have reacted to the Tinge comment here eventually, what's your speculation on that?
I'm just trying to make a point that I hope matters, 0 augs on player ships shouldn't be the case and I also think 1 aug shouldn't be the case either.

[valid mauve]

I already said I've flagged it to be fixed.

[fast escarp]

It's not the point

I understand the 1 aug discussion is a different matter, but would you defend the statspread of those that currently have 1 aug?

[civic wave]

Intentional. We're not touching such.

For historical reasons and players use the hull bonus for trading reasons. And doing mass aug resets is disruptive.

You've already raised this in the past several times as well and been told reasons.

[fast escarp]

Nobody seems to use Pyrite for trading, Ampage and Voltage doesn't seem used for that either, should Christmas Sleight and Pax Christmaticus be relegated to trade bot role?

[tidal vine]

the ampage and voltage have inbuilt elec bonuses, i remember using ampages as swarm bots when i was a f2p years ago

[fast escarp]

Also just noticed Mzungu Fluid doesn't have a damage bonus while Liquid has +50%, consider if it's suitable in this case to trade away 2 weapon slots for some damage bonus.