@bruceg, that’s exactly what Lancer was at first. But the interceptor is basically a DPS oriented scout, while a light cruiser is a small battleship. I’d love to see more light cruiser classes, though.

As I see this, the model for a CL is the Artemis class, which is a small, heavily nerfed battleship (really!). The Valkyrie class is an hybrid between Artemis and a missile cruiser. The Apollo class is an Artemis refitted for heavy beam combat. But you can use the three classes for basically anything. Some will have a harder time, sure, but a captain can execute every single combat order on the book using them.

We could stick some gatlings to an Artemis and see what happens, but removing her tubes seems excessive. Maybe by cutting the beam range, so that the beams are indeed very effective but only at absolute knife range? You could compensate by adding a small cannon and boosting manouver. That’s got to be fun.

You could also sell it as an “exploration-based” light cruiser that’s mostly defensive.