Hey, I'm rather good at flying the ship if I do say so myself =P
He's right though, no long range weapons puts the Irra at a significant disadvantage most of the time. As I said, my successes against those targets were not all 1v1, most of them I had at least one scorpion gunboat assisting me (and nomad gunboat turrets are basically as powerful as cruiser turrets at the moment, making the scorpion quite powerful), and I know the weak points / blind spots of most of those enemy ships, giving me an advantage when I can maneuver into position properly.