I just noticed that I could drag the ship pictures here directly into the game window to load them. Awesome feature!
Name: Vesicle - by Steel Phoenix
Value: 71,000
Price range: First
A starter-cost ship entirely encased in a shield bubble. A decent starter up to Standard difficulty. It's zippy, and if it's still flying at the end of combat almost never leaves you with a repair bill, which can be nice for building up some resources for improvements. It's very lightly armed and vulnerable to electric weapons, but that's the price you play for living in a tiny bubble.
Name: Conflagration by Steel Phoenix
Value: 1,499,550
Price Range: Second
I trimmed this down from a much larger ship and it still works! Very defensive front with wide spaced rail guns. Performs well against ships that rock back and forth, since they get a fresh set of rails on each pass. Weak against long rail guns running away, but what isn't?
Name: Arbalest by Steel Phoenix
Value: 2,500,000
Price Range: Third
Form springing from function, Arbalest has one long rail down the center for sniping key components, and two sets of very well protected ion cannons. The crystals cascade in a way that makes it seamless to switch from two to four beams, and the AI handles it well. Just enough missiles in back to get around front defenses and ravage small swarms. Defensively, the shielding for each set of crystals is located in three different parts of the ship, making it hard to overwhelm. Forward flak for the bulk incoming, and a lot of hidden point defense to handle anything that gets past the other defenses. In the rare case that anything gets past all of this to break the crystals, the ship comes apart somewhat gracefully into a sniper and two flankers. They aren't great ships on their own, but late in a brawl, they often suffice.