So last night Aikune sent me a link
Fleet Qin build recommendations via in-game mail (thanks man!), and since I'm a filthy casual I apparently have several weeks' worth of grinding Iconian marks and dilithium coming up. :P From what I can tell the only differences are about half of the ship's equipment and a few boff skills, everything else looks unchanged (skills, traits, doffs etc).
Also, I prayed to the almighty googles about my cannons' crappy RoF and discovered something about the UI mechanics that I didn't know. If "fire all weapons" is keybound to a spam button (paired with "distribute shields" for instance), it
constantly resets the firing cycles. Changing that keybind and making a few other tweaks has somewhat improved the DHC-burst performance, which should make the Iconian grind a bit less painful.
There's still a noticeable delay between when I hit the key and the first shots actually fire though, and I don't understand why. I'm practically on top of the target before the first shots fire, and raptors are fast but they're not
that fast. Is there some particular order weapons should be equipped from right to left for optimum RoF, or some other such nonsense?