I was there, it wasn't as good as you remember it to be.
BAF in 2008 was Templar spam, Templars could do everything. You brawl a group of Templars and caps got eaten alive, caps often died within the first 5-10 minutes of every fight that happened, BAF vs KNF often devolved into brawls that lasted 40+ minutes if not over an hour.
Mechanics that let you instakill people tends to suck always, and realistically who benefits more from those that can use them? Skilled pilots that have the situational awareness, evasion and aiming skills or people starting out?
The length of snub brawls was always attributed to time to slowly eat away at capital hulls… pounding them bit by bit.
Snub only fights rarely ever lasted that long.
This is objectively incorrect. In 2009 and 2010, snub-only groupfights would last upwards of an hour if either side had at least one skilled player, meanwhile caps would go down within minutes to either enemy caps or to bombers. These aren't just rose-tinted glasses you're wearing, Chenzo, these are beer goggles. There were innumerable threads complaining about this exact thing; "how do we shorten snub TTK while increase cap TTK, it makes no sense that a Bismarck goes down quicker than a lone Sabre". If you want to provide input, please make sure that it is not straightforwardly factually wrong.