If you could get through the game on Hard with the Mastiff I'd be impressed... I just don't think it would hold up in many of the mid-late game battles. Work around it's limitations and the use it for it's strength - defenses. I didn't use shields on any of my fighters for the longest time, because I would round up so many enemies with my mothership that they were mostly safe and I could instead load them up with maneuverability, speed and cannon rate of fire systems.
Sure it's kind of annoying trying to dock sometimes but it's usually just a few more seconds of high speed mode. Just a bit irritated with the misleading information... it said in the letter that it had 25 maneuverability (which didn't seem like a big downgrade from the 30 of the Mastiff) but turns out it has 15 which is awful
