jbox1 I know this is old and I am not Teg but I was board and decided to have a look at your Beetle ship and try to improve it. (Improving small ships seems more interesting than big ships since big ships just end up been a bunch of duplicated modules.)
In any case, this is what I ended up with, "The Beetle MK S" (not to be confused with MK 5),
Points of improvement:
- Much faster missile firing (probably more than x4).
- Forward point defense.
- Armor spikes in front of ion cannons (helps to block electro-bolts).
- Shields are powered up much faster (power storage also helps against surge damage at the start of a battle).
- Generators are no longer behind the ion cannons, which is most likely place damage will get though.
In the end it cost about the same as the MK4 Beetle.
And here's a beetle battle,
