The last changes were very bad for bounty hunter mode, which seems to be intended to be the core or at least initial player experience.
Bounty hunter requires it to be possible to keep a ship alive with low repair costs, which the new electrobolts make nearly impossible for short range combatants because shields no longer protect weapons from energy loss. This makes lasers a complete dead end instead of a viable weapon for tanky brawlers in the midgame.
The large cannon and ion beam range nerfs broaden the missile range advantage. This is makes missile kites more forgiving, which is kind of bad. Missile kites were already the dominant cheese for late game bounty hunter because they never put themselves in range to be shot at and thus didn't rack up repair bills. If anything large cannons needed a range buff to compete with missiles. It's not like they were used in the old tourney meta.
The improved missiles utterly and completely wreck the previously most threatening enemies. Even the Ragnarok, which could previously stalemate a modest 2 launcher kite now loses because its shields no longer protect its point defense mounts, allowing leakers to destroy them. The Cerberus is a joke now. All the enemies that used to be intimidating because they had effective shield layouts are now also jokes.
I might be able to get behind the standard cannon nerf, but the others are all problematic.
