Meh, this is a bigger topic, I feel. I think the main problem is that any kind of CD can be used on any kind of CD-slotted ship, at least I was always able to use reinforced CDs on LFs, just not while engine-killing myself. Cruisers are sort of bad at intercepting, but they are pretty well capable of. If Cruisers were forced to use a type of CD that makes them consider very much more when and against what to use the CD (since they don't need to use CDs for hitting mines but only incomming capital missiles and CDing battleships) by having a very limited amount of CD ammo (like 20 or something like that), it would actually create the necessity for cruisers to not be on their own - which is what they can be right now. Cruisers are the perfect ships to fly alone, that is something nobody can deny. They are able to take on snubs, very easily on gunboats and can fight bigger capitals easily. The only weakness is their range, which is a pretty acceptable weakness. Gunboats can be better against snubs, but they are weak against cruisers. A gunboat CDing a cruiser will think twice about CDing a cruiser. A cruiser however can CD anything and take on the fight. I personally would limit the CD ammo of cruisers, and in that case, the LFs you proposed would be awesome as support ships. They can spam CDs, meaning they can intercept torpedos and missiles for the cruiser, they can intercept enemies nicely and all that. The suggestion is to take the theoretical omnipotence from cruisers and make LFs a nice support ship for them, as any snub is a nice support ship for any battleship right now, to show some similarity.
Right now, fighting-ships up to battlecruisers don't really need a support ship. It's a nice to have, nothing more. There needs to be a demand for them, otherwise they are just nice-to-haves and people who so far prefered to play LFs suddenly end up with a ship that is nothing more than a nice-to-have.
