personally, i have tried the somtaav SHF - as a bomber substitute. it does OK with its 350 bats / bots - meaning it can survive a lot longer against capships than a bomber. its not much bigger than a bomber and can dodge just as fine - mind, the torp launcher is on its roof - and is stripped quickly - so you d rather run out of weapons before you run out of bats / bots.
i never tried the spatial, so no idea there. the marsflier is a nice ship, cause its very unique - but it has no torp slot and when you put "normal" weapons onto it, it looks utterly stupid, cause the weapon models look about as good on it as a nomad cap turret on a BHG gunship ( like a bright blue jellyfish ).
the problem is that SHF do not fill up a niche. they are slow, big and - as a whole costly. - that is due to the fact that they rely on lvl10 fighter shields that are pierced quickly, - so they take a lot of hull hits. they cannot outturn heavy or light fighters - or even VHFs - and a lot of bombers are even quicker than SHFs ( a GREAT problem there - a bomber should never out turn any SHF ) - i daresay, there are even gunboats out ( maybe BHG gunship ) that turn at the same speed.
i think, they were intended to be "light gunboats" but turned to super heavy fighters. - especially since bombers and gunboats themselves fulfil the role of "light gunboats" now anyway. if SHFs had anything unique, it would make them worth purchasing. ( maybe 10 front lvl10 weapons - but thats overkill when it comes to jousting )
so it leaves the bitter taste of an allmost useless shipclass that cannot really be put to a good use. but yes - from a RP point of view, they should be fighters with "room" to live in when you spend much time in space.
![[Image: just_a_signature_by_sjrarj-d63yjsx.png]](https://img00.deviantart.net/ca73/i/2013/123/e/a/just_a_signature_by_sjrarj-d63yjsx.png)