Can I jump in here, even if I am still a Newbe at Starfire?
Fighters:
This is a space combat game. From a realistic point of view (I assume that is what is being asked for?), fighters in space simply don´t make sense - period.
A space-fighter is just a small ship. It is as nimble as its power to mass ratio allows
(yes, I know, SF assumes reactionless drives, but if we think that concept through to the end, nothing will ever hit anything, realy, because if I can move a hundered km in any direction in the blink of an eye, my ship will _never_ be where you are shooting your laser beam at once that beam reaches that point).
You could trade some mass (mostely defenses/weapons mass) for more engines and make the fighter more nimble, but then you would have a fighter with basicly no armament at all.
I guess, what I am trying to say is:
If a fighter devotes 50% of its mass to engines and I build a ship which devotes 50% of its mass to engines, those two units will behave exactely the same in the "nimble" departement.
Now, I am not arguing against fighters in SF, but, IMO, there is no logic/realism involved in space-fighters at all (or not for special rules for them, anyway).
IDEW/Pods:
I agree that there is no logical reason that IDEW/Pods should _not_ exist. There are, as Paul pointed out, logical reasons that IDEW/Pods should not exist the way they are _now_.
I´ll use the IDEW-F as an example.
Now, a regular F is size 4.
Given that the IDEW-F only has half range and damage, I think it reasonable, that it would be half that size too (damage being a function of range (or energy density/whatever) here, basicly).
As the power generater is a lot smaller too, lets reduce the size again by 50% (this is assuming that the power generator isn´t the major but neither a negligible part of the gun), leaving us at a weapon-size of 1 HS.
As is, an IDEW-F has a size of 1/20 HS, which, francly, is pretty stupid.
If that weapon is realy only 1/20 HS, I will build a ton of DD/BS-1 with 240 (space equivalent of 3 standard F) of those, put them close in to a WP and annihilate anything coming through. Who cares, that each gun can only fire every 30 minutes. Each DD/BS-1 will dish out an insane amount of damage, before every gun has fired. After that, I will gladly let the DD be blown away, as it has already killed 3 SDs.
Once we get to the Advanced IDEWs, it gets even more ridiculous (a weapon with the same performance (aside from ROF) as the regular one, but with only 1/80 the size? That´s what I call miniaturization
.
So, my suggestion would be:
Increase the size of IDEW/Pods - at least to 1 HS and increase their cost - not sure by how much, but looking at the real world, building something the size of a car that can handle one megawatt is not that tough and probably rather cheap. Building something the size of a cell phone, that can handle one megawatt, oh boy, that is gonna be expensive, if at all possible!
Hm, an easy mechanic could be:
Half size (i.e. 2 HS) --> double the cost
Quarter size (i.e. 1 HS) --> 4 times the cost and so on.
Basicly, giving you the choise of how large you want your IDEWs to be. If you are willing to pay a ridiculous amount of money, you can still get your 0.05 HS IDEW. It would be crazy, but you _could_ do it.
Ok, I admit, I haven´t realy thought this through. Perhaps a starting point.