If we were to consider the drones, looking at the Tabanid - it has a single ER, and you're getting 3 of them for a single Koroshiya, Striga, Shikra, Eisenstrum. You're not going to threshold them even with reengineered lasers (except in Aft). Meanwhile one of those fighters us causing 2-3 thresholds a round and some of them delete a drone in a round.
Thresholds seem to be a significant deciding factor assuming you're mounting a decent amount of armor. Snowballing sensor, FCS, weapon knocked out etc, not to mention crits forcing control rolls in addition to taking 20+ damage - and control rolls basically guaranteeing you're not in a good position to fire that turn. Nose weapons are much more important than wing weapons at least on the initial joust. After which initiative rules almost guarantee a blindspot deflection shot on the enemy. If you're reasonably protected against Threshold crits, then the next thing is consistent big damage from ballistic weapons it seems (because of the increase in reflec fighters right now and lack of .. longtom fighters? :) )
And lets park AAA missiles/ordanance for a sec because they wildly RNG results (control roll, threshold crit, single armor facing hit - not complaining I like the heavier RNG element in CBT).
So I think we're looking at 3 factors:
-Reflec armor or other great Armor (Shikra)
-High Damage Ballistic Weapons
-Overall non-energy High Damage
Koroshiya deals very well with the majority of clan fighters. The Simurgh really messes up the Koroshiya and other reflective fighters while doing almost as well against energy fighters. But then the Eisenstrum does well against both while only being thresholdable by the big weapons in the nose. The Hydaspes Algar can be extremely stupid with HE ammo (range becomes short very quickly against other aerospace) - but is usually 33% more expensive then the competition.
Thoughts? Love? Hate?