A battlecruiser in Discover terms is a fairly useless class anyway. A battleship can run up to it and outlast it easily, yuz might not remember, but before Thannies, the Argus-class were in use for quite some time and they performed badly. Maltese Stortas could do circles around them at no noticable disatvantage in firepower, while heavier ships were usually countered by Zephyrs, which HAD the advantage of firepower and hull.
Suppose all battleships run at 90m/s - what is the point of having a warship that does the same speed while not sporting any advantages in terms of armor and/or firepower in exchange?
Ideally, the colonial heavy of choice should be a battlecruiser in idea, but not in its discovery classfication-dictated stats. A very fast battleship-shielded craft with no thruster but say 110-120 impulse, 500-600k HPs, a dozen turret HPs mostly heavies and primaries, token secondaries if any at all, no bays and a Geb's moves. Priced at 500mil.
And yeah, CR has surprisingly many friends who could RPly help out devising a CR-specific or joint line of post-invasion equipment.
Something should definitely be done on the subject. I actually did enjoy playing a Colonial. But in all honesty, the technology provided let me down every time Gallia turned up, only decent thing going was the Thannie and Nyx. Even now somebody decided to break the Thannie.
The Kronos I think, considering it's size needed at least 4 Heavy slots, 4 Primaries and 4-6 secondaries. Maintaining the hull it had (Around 850-900k i think) It turned like Manhattan in orbit and made the Liberty Dreadnought look like a Starflier in size. That would give it some sort of frontal firepower against Outcasts (Almost a match in firepower and hull) while it being slightly smaller than the Ransuer, gave it some sort of chance to strafe while the Ransuer had about 100k more hull. Right now the Zephyr is almost as useful as a chocolate teapot versus Valors. They just don't do enough damage for the size of the thing. It might as well be a battlecruiser. Even as a support ship they don't actually work.
I think reusing some older models like the Kronos and just tweaking it's firepower/scale/speed would do the trick. It would make up for the size. Or for the Zephyr, add some sort of weaponry to it. Since let's face it, even for a carrier it's pathetically underpowered to an extent even the size doesn't make up for it. Either that or create some sort of new model, either way the ship line for CR needs an overhaul in some areas. The Bomber especially considering it has a huge spoiler which is nothing but a target. there's no drag in space!. Thus making it pointless.
But agreed, CR has plenty friends who could bail them out. About time they stepped in and gave them some technology that actually counters what they're fighting. We're not all still fighting starfliers you know. New stuff for CR please!