So I've been working on a personal balance modification to some of the mods I use (Beautiful Battles and Rangefinder). The net result is:
Decreased damage on S weapons (except the alien salvage ones, since those were shit already, and also excluding PD weapons)
Increased damage on L weapons
Dramatically increased range on missiles
Increased range on lances, kinetic artillery, arc emitters, energy torpedoes
Decreased range on torpedoes
Mass Drivers given 50% extra shield damage (to match their lying fucking flavor text)
Kinetic artillery given 100% extra shield damage
--
I intend to change the Rangefinder computers such that all of them have the "orbit and fire" behavior rather than the "run away" behavior, have one at the longest range have the "run away" behavior (for carriers), and add more so that missile and heavy L weapon boats can snipe from farther out. No idea if any of that's possible since I haven't dug into the files yet.
If anyone's using those mods and is interested in the changes, I can toss a link your way once I'm finished and have them tested. The general intent of my changes is to make long-range combat not only possible but viable, to give missiles a real advantage to make them stand out against torpedoes and compensate for them having a hard counter, to make non-autocannon kinetics not suck, and to make large ships carrying large weapons feel legitimately awesome. It also gives purpose back to Corvettes as something beyond ablative armor, since their speed might be necessary to chase down carriers and missile boats.