Interesting. Am I the only one who has always seen gunboats as useless?
I'm a bad capital ship pilot, but I was still able to destroy THREE Corsair Gunboats in an icefield. I admit they weren't the smartest, but they had armour and all important stuff, and as I said I suck in caps too.
On the other hand, I've always seen Gunboats die to bombers too easily. Two bombers should equal most properly flown Gunboats or not? Unless it's one of the heavy gunboats with dual basic missiles (which are being spammed), it's often quite easy to beat one with two bombers. Some can go down even to one bomber with some luck and patience, even with roughly equal pilots (*cough* BH GS).
For me, Gunboats are just annoying cannon fodders.