Times have certainly changed around disco, particularly regarding nomads. See, back 8-10~ years ago, Nomads had no 'indy' players, and the Keepers official faction had exclusive rights to all nomad ships and tech. Likely as a result of this, and because their small numbers meant the odds were always stacked against them in PvP scenarios, Nomad ships and equipment were balanced differently than what was used by other factions in the mod.
For example, the old Nomad Gunboat had a pretty decent forward gun (on par with the liberty siege cruiser's forward gun), and its turrets - while slower firing than human gunboat turrets at the time (1.0's compared to 2.0-4.0 for human ships) - did equivalent damage to the cruiser turrets used on other craft. Advantages like this existed throughout the Nomad ship/weapon lines, and while they were most definitely 'overpowered' (intentionally so), they brought relative balance to an outnumbered and often outgunned faction. Even with these 'overpowered' weapons and ships, most keepers still chose to fly snubcraft over caps due to how good the old bomber and vhf were by comparison.
Fast forward to today, and we have greater numbers of nomads due to less strict recruitment for the K'hara, a second nomad faction with the Vagrants, and nearly all nomad ships available to 'indy' players. Now, personally I think indy nomads are still kind of a bad idea, but it does on occasion help even the odds for us in pvp engagements where we'd otherwise be vastly outnumbered.
The problem with these changes really comes in with the ships and weapons: Nomad ships have largely been rebalanced to be more or less identical to their human counterparts, and so have the weapons, but despite this there are still huge gaps in tech availability for Nomad players which leaves them underpowered and wanting.
Issue #1: Lack of Missiles
Aside from a select few fighter missiles, and a couple of bomber torpedoes mimicking the nova and incapacitator, Nomads lack any kind of missile weaponry for their capital ships. From gunboat silencers and vandals and annihilators to the larger trinity and devastator torpedo launchers used on ships ranging all the way up to dreadnaughts, these weapons form a huge part of the arsenal used on many human ships, and for good reason: They have longer range, higher damage potential, and tracking, at the cost of ammo and being counterable in a variety of ways.
Not having access to these weapons puts Nomad caps at a distinct disadvantage.
Issue #2: Lack of pulse turrets
Pulse turrets are an integral weapon on nearly every capship loadout for nearly every faction. Dual pulse gunboats is the standard for supporting anti-cap engagements. Pulse turrets are used on cruisers to keep shields down so they can effectively utilize cerbs and mortars. Battleship pulses and autopulses, or EMP flak turrets, are used on every battleship loadout I've ever gone up against.
Nomads do not have pulse turrets. We do have, on cruiser and up, "Pulse beam" turrets, which have their advantages, but they are (in my opinion) not a valid substitute for standard pulses. On the nomad cruiser, for example, a pulse beam turret will use 1.3 million power per shot (more than half your core, and more than a light mortar) to deal 130k shield damage - not even enough to deshield another cruiser. It has a 20 second cooldown, and that cooldown is subject to a glitch that will cause the weapon to go on cooldown even if it fails to fire due to arcs or power requirement not being sufficient when you hit the trigger (which happens quite frequently in the middle of a battle, it's a wholly unreliable weapon). The cruiser's pulse beam turret is also a heavy turret, as opposed to being a light turret like regular cruiser pulses, and it only has 2000 range whereas the standard pulse turret has 2500 range.
Now, pulses do hit nearly instantly at their max range (about half a second to impact at 2k range), which is definitely an advantage against smaller targets, but I feel this advantage is completely outweighed by the disadvantages of the weapon.
To further this issue, pulse beams are only available for the cruiser, battlecruiser, and battleship - they do not exist for the nomad gunboat, which also lacks pulse turrets, leaving it as the only gunboat in the game with no anti-shield weaponry.
Even if we ignore Issue #1 and the lack of missiles for nomad ships, pulse turrets are an absolute must - not having them is a massive detriment to the effectiveness of nomad capital ships.
Issue #3: Arcs
This may or may not be intentional, but nomad capital ships (at the very least, to my knowledge, the Siris Cruiser and Irra Battlecruiser) were designed with no rear-capable heavy turret arcs. The Siris cruiser, for example, has 4 heavy turrets but is limited to less than 180 degrees forward for all of them. Past about 90 degrees out from the hull they're incapable of firing up, to the sides, or backward. Given that the primary tactic used for cruisers when facing any larger opponent is to kite away while turret steering, rear-capable arcs are an absolute necessity. Some cruisers can get away with smaller arcs on their heavy weapons due to cruiser pulse turrets using light mounts (so you can fire pulses while fleeing and turn your ship inwards when firing mortars or missiles), but given that the nomads have no pulse turrets for light hardpoints, that becomes void.
The Irra, as well, has largely forward-facing arcs, as do (from what I've heard) both battleships. This does fit in, somewhat, with the aggressive style of combat nomads should have in-rp, but when you get into actual pvp mechanics it just doesnt work out. Because of poor arcs and limited weaponry, Nomad ships all seem to be balanced around only attacking things smaller than they are, and never being able to punch above their weight like so many other ships in the same class are capable of.
Issue #4: The Anzu
The anzu-class nomad gunship was added during my hiatus from disco, and from what I've heard was drastically overpowered as a gunboat-class ship (and only existed in that state very briefly before it was caught by the balance team). Apparently it was smaller than the nammu, had a heavy gunboat core, 9 guns, a forward gun, and was super agile. Regardless of if this is true or not, what happened afterwards still impacts the ship negatively to this day: The anzu was changed into a super-heavy-fighter class ship, while not receiving proper hardpoints or a remodel/resize.
The current anzu model is roughly 3-4 times larger than any SHF in the game (I've compared it directly to a spatial and osprey in conn, and without a doubt you could fit 3 spatials inside of it with room to spare. Granted, the spatial is relatively small for an SHF, but they dont vary by much). Despite this, it has similar stats to the rest - slightly more hull and cargo space, but the same power core, shield type, agility, etc. This means it's far easier to hit, especially with heavy weapons, than other SHFs.
The Anzu also only has a single torpedo/cd mount, while other SHFs all have dual mounts for torps/cds. This effectively negates its ability to function like the rest of the ships in its class, because it either loses control and minetrapping ability from having a cruise disruptor, or it loses anti-cap ability from a bomber torpedo. If it werent for the dual torp mounts on other SHFs, nobody would be using them at all, so you can imagine how this impacts the Anzu.
This ship needs to figure out what it's intended for. If it is going to remain an SHF, it needs a second torpedo/cd mount and a downsize. If its going to go back to a gunship, it needs gunboat-grade shields, weapons, hull, power, etc. Personally I like it as an SHF, it just feels horribly underpowered at the moment in that role.
EDIT: Nix this, I was mistaken on something here. The rest above still applies.
I will add another point though: Nomad Shredders and heavy shredders, which are the equivalent to solaris and gatling solaris turrets, are only 1300m/s speed rather than 1500m/s, making them less effective against snub craft than their human counterparts (an for the dps loss, you might as well just use primaries and suffer the extra 300 speed lost).