Why is Discovery Freelancer focused on VHFs?

[Haste]

When capital ships start to appear in groups of more than two or three, snub PvP of any sort quickly becomes almost impossible, unless you count swarms of bombers lobbing SNACs for 3 hours on end as gameplay of any sort. And even that's assuming the cap pilots don't mess you around and start shuttlerunning bots (good luck CDing all of them).

That's less of a balance issue and more of a players-being-idiotic issue.

Not really. Ideally gameplay accounts for potential abuse and prevents it. This has thus far been impossible, unfortunately.