When Xavier announced we would be deploying new cruisers (now Viper and Horizon), the idea was to have specialist light cruisers that would be similar enough to the Artemis class that an officer could afford to change ships without having to relearn an entire set of tactics, as would happen, for example, if you switch from a battlecruiser to a scout.
I then presented him a set of drafts for a cruiser that would be oriented to aggressive beam tactics, i.e., something very similar to what became the Apollo class. To preserve game ballance, I wanted to sacrifice a lot of shields (~40-50%) but to incorporate either the beams of a battlecruiser, or to just add another standard array (and to overlap the beams). Instead, the Apollo class has the typical two arrays with a faster firing rate and overlapping arcs. She also incorporates other of my proposals, that is, to allocate to the front shields some of the capacity of the rear shields.
Adding the gatlings is not that bad of an idea, but it raises two questions:
1. What do you do so that the resulting ship remains a light cruiser? This means you have to be able to perform similar tasks on an Artemis, Apollo, and Valkyrie class, even if the ship is different.
2. What do you sacrifice to preserve game ballance? The increased rate of fire needs to be counterballanced. Keep in mind that if you kill too much manouvering power it will be hard to aim.