Small ships are supposed to be able to harass, tackle and flee from targets that are too big for them to kill. Big ships are supposed to be more vulnerable if they have no support from quicker ships. Likewise, those quick ships are intended to protect bigger ships as part of a convoy. Speed is a tactical advantage that you can leverage. Groups with FTs and Navies have the advantage of being able to support their tackler’s speed, which should allow you to catch a lone tackler. Pirates will get more support like that in future builds, too.
What we don’t want is small ships keeping players engaged for extended periods of time (like 45 minutes from several attacks) and preventing them from playing the game. Since that overlaps with legitimate tactics, it’s difficult to prevent it mechanically without impacting the importance of speedy ships in group PvP. That also means groups need to be prepared to defend against quick ships, because we only want to intervene in the most extreme cases. Generally, we want it to be dangerous for the tackler to get close enough to keep players in combat if they’re facing a vastly superior force. It’s possible we’ll make adjustments in that area, but we don’t want to compromise other areas of the game in the process. There are a large number of skill changes, rule changes and just general overhaul that might impact this in 1.2. We’ll see if it’s a big issue at that time.
This is why we have exit points in Ad-Hocs and one reason we have various forms of protection between encounters.