As I've said before, even if it was desirable, we simply can't pigeonhole BS like we do.
We have too many factions, too much space, not enough people, to balance BS around flying with friends. For many, their BS is their main/favorite character. It's whom they put most of their work into, both in terms of roleplaying their story and the money for the ship and its equipment. I don't think it's fair to mandate, through balance, 'you shouldn't be flying it unless you have friends that want to follow you around.'
It should be able to stand on its own merits and justify its own existence. It should be capable of killing at least one other class of ship besides itself. The class of ship that makes the most sense is cruiser.
Don't even bring up POBs. While the BS is needed there, POBs are not sieged often enough to jusify that as being "what BS is for".
Furthermore - and again I'm repeating myself here - Even if the BS does fly with an escort, what will the BS do? Let's say the opposing force's BS was destroyed, or they never had one to begin with. What does the BS do now? The enemy ships are not going to stick around and let the BS fire at them, they are going to utilize their maneuverability to get away (and stay away) from the battleship's range. And then they will maintain that range, sniping at you and then engaging your escorts when they leave you behind. The battleship is effectively irrelevant to the encounter.
I'm not saying we should give BS a weapon that obliterates Cruisers. Far from it. But do give us a weapon that can actually hit cruisers. Long range, good speed, low damage, low turret rotation speed. The cruiser is still going to avoid some of the fire because of his own thrusting and strafing. This will make a BS vs. cruiser duel a fair fight, rather than "lolol I can both outrun and outgun BS, and there's nothing BS can do about it".
Further, the battleship will become more important in group fights. You will be valuable because of your ability to fight cruisers, or because of your ability to take out a battleship that is now a danger to your side's cruisers.
The mod is in beta. We know there is going to be an Update 4 before release. Can we please just try this for one beta version and see how it goes?