Im gonna disagree with you here, Its a dumb idea to attack the seismic turds that litter sats with this loadout, but its not as bad as you're saying it is either: its not about "synergy", the benefit of running ions/clusters/HLC is having both a medium and a short ranged counter to enemies. With ions and clusters, you can put power to engines, and chase scouts down using ions to strip shields and clusters to finish them, conserving your blaster pool. Heavies are for anything that gets out of your 5k ion/cluster range. Its a general approach instead of over specialization, which comes in handy in a T1 SF which is kind of made to be a generalist spaceship. You have the ability to use two primary weapons in a starguard/rycer, why restrict yourself to one range? Also Rapids suck so hard, and should never be put on anything, much less a strike, which has so many better options.

Oh, it's you... You're one of those Republic meanies that don't let me cluster spam them :/ But Seriously though, thats some jimmie-rusltling quality gunship play you've got there *twitch*. Think you could share anything on how to stay mobile/avoid missile lock bonanzas in gunships after the BR nerf? :/ I'm having some trouble getting the hang of gunships that can't yolo halfway across the map to BLC unsuspecting fools anymore :I

Everybody Betray me, I am feddup with this worrrllddd. Seriously, get over yourself. It's a game mechanic, and one that makes perfect sense, people who are willing to pay extra can level other ships components with something they're good at flying. You don't have to convert the ship req to fleet req if you don't want to, no one's forcing you to do it, stop being a drama queen.