“Did you test it with pvp?”
Nope. And I think I see where you’re going with this, so let me stop you right there… Over the decades, I have flown DYs successfully enough times, and even put them on the high scoreboards in a pure PvP game. I have a pretty good idea how it handles, and I realize that a lot of PvP fights are going to be one-sided.
The DY-600 never has been, nor will it be, a PvP slayer. That’s just the personality of it. You’re trading lethality for survivability. The DY, even back before there were bots, has always been a slow-grind. You fly it with an eye for the long game. You’re going to absorb a lot of torps and spend a lot of time xwarping- often without dealing any damage at all. The trade off, is that you can keep the DY alive almost indefinitely with a tiny bit of patience and self-control. Over time, you’ll deal damage, get kills, and earn gold.
The DY isn’t well-suited for an instant gratification play style. If your idea of fun is to start a new ship each time you log in, and jump straight into battle for some fast action, (nothing wrong with that) the DY probably isn’t for you. It requires a slower, more strategic kind of play. It is a much more rewarding ship for players who like to build up big-gold ships over weeks or months. You have to capitalize on opportunities to vulture injured ships and wait for your enemies to get lulled into making mistakes.
At near-zero range, the DY can absolutely melt almost any ship in the game (especially with the new upgraded freighter torps and fast-recharge phasers). The xwarp isn’t particularly useful for direct offense, but if you’re mindful of what’s going on in the quadrant, you can use “xwarp braking” and pop in on battling enemies.
The DY-600 still presents a very viable option for gameplay, which is at the heart of making ship balance work. I think it would be incorrect to say that it “needs” a cloak simply because it doesn’t go well with an aggressive strategy.