The trend of giving small ships higher and higher cruise speeds is getting silly. Coupled with devs who have more or less been making bigger ships more obsolete with each passing version, there needs to be a change to make big ships useful again.
Here's a crazy idea. Small combat fighters and short ranged bombers shouldn't have cruise engines. Have docking modules serve an actual purpose, and let DM ships ferry and resupply ships that shouldn't have the capacity of lone, unsupported flight. Give DM slots to every ship larger than a freighter, and balance it so that ships can choose to forego weapons, armor, and cargo space to be able to host a snub swarm from anything with enough space.
Currently, as it has been getting worse for a while now, a snub swarm kills everything, can catch anything, and has no counter. The inherent limit of supplies and range should be present to actually serve as a drawback.
Not only will this serve to bridge the gap between fighter and cap combat without having the need for nerfing snub combat capabilities, but it adds a whole new mechanic of fleet combat.
On small scale patrols, individual or small snub parties can still keep bigger ships cd'd and gank with little risk to themselves, but bigger ships that manage to escape can actually survive without the massively oorp risk of getting indefinitely pursued by tiny ships which shouldn't have the range to.
Naturally, interceptors like LFs which sacrifice survivability and firepower, and long range heavy bombers and SHFs should keep cruise engines and speeds, but no others.