So, to be clear, you’re giving minefields to defense frigs, leaving beams as they are, and nerfing torps.
So, basically, you’re just moving the frigball meta to defense frigs, since you can just stack them with mines/beam AoE and pretty much laugh at anything that tried to come over your cover as it is decimated by twice as much AoE per ship, and your burst DPS is trashed by the resist shields.
The only real way to combat that frigball is with your own frigball of torps to force them out of position.
Here’s an idea: What if ships had, like, roles, and those roles made them naturally weaker to other types of ships?
Inties should suck versus fighters, frigs should suck versus inties, and fighters should suck versus frigs.
I don’t see a point in making frigs stronger versus interceptors or fighters. In any actual match they’re already quite balanced already. A smart inty pilot can 1v1 most frigs. Fighters generally get wrecked unless they sneak in with a chameleon or the target is distracted.
These changes effectively make frigs better at inty cover. Why? Isn’t the entire point of inties that they counter frigs? You know, so that some people on your team have to play something other than a frigate because a well balanced team should include all ship types?
If you can’t kill frigs with inties, then why bother playing inties outside of beacon hunt? If nobody is playing inties, then why bother playing fighters? Do you really think a competitive match will result in anything other than two sides worth of nothing but frigates? That already happens far too much, and it removes incentive to play 2/3 of the ships in the game.
I hate rolling an elimination match these days. Every one of them is two giant balls of frigates. It’s boring, it lasts forever, and there’s no good reason to fly anything that isn’t a frig because no matter your skill you’ll be smashed to pieces in seconds if you do anything other than play the frigball game.