Other than my deep seated hatred of starfighters, that sounds like it could be fun. I really wish the new weapons system wasn't so cumbersome, then I might actually finish a new ship or, refit my Eidolon.
I think the issue with secondary and effect systems not factoring in to a weapons DPS has been fixed. Shouldnt be too hard to test, anyway. You could give the Eidolon a big rapid-fire cannon again or whatever. Also, shields took a corresponding nerf, so killing things is actually possible again.
Additionally, I think armor tanking might be feasible at this point. Cannon/beam weapons with low rates of fire can't penetrate thick hulls rapidly, and come with a low ROF by default. There are effect subsystems which increase armor resistance by 50% and 75% protection against piercing effects (which deal damage to a block and the one behind it.) Also, I was reading the forums recently and noted the new devbuild supposedly has a bobby ai setting to target missiles, which can be destroyed in-flight. If that actually works, you can use point-defense turrets to protect against missiles. Which is awesome.
There is also a new copy-paste function in build mode, a filter for the remove function to only remove specific blocks, and in the devbuild a replace blocks option (replace blocks of type A with type B) and permanent save functionality to the copy-paste function.
My plan right now is to design the hulls of my vessels, save them as blueprints, and fill them in during play. Now I just need access to the computer lab...