I feel like both of you are on the wrong foot here.
Jesus Christ, no wonder so many people abandoned this game.
This isn't really the reason but I'll assume you're being rhetoric.
Saying offense is intended does not mean it does not offend. If anything it points out how offensive it is.
But it's always up to the individual (you) to be offended. I think you're misassuming his intentions because you're prone to taking his odd approach to the conversation seriously.
I'm not a fish expert, but I think the ship is just fine. Your later comments are what really brought me here:
I brought this up in light of the change to the Squid, which is countered most by the Goldfish, and the recent change to the Mobula, which was strong against the Goldfish.
Well, the interesting thing here is that overtime it was realized by the competitive community that taking squid agains't a fish =/= instant loss, and that a hwachafish in particular could 1v1 a lot of the meta mobulas you see today and some others, but results vary depending on the build. I won't deny that fish specifically has some advantages agains't a squid matchup.
Speaking of, the change to the squid is a bit too heavy. The thing about squid is it doesn't have the speed to dodge damage, but it has enough to avoid gun arcs and kite. The previous squid was fine because the high hull let you commit to some engagements where staying for a kill mattered and had to be done. This made it much alike to the pyra at times, but it's either that or it gets a boost in firepower to burst people down before it's squashed. (Or some other changes that I'll end up describing shortly)
I was personally interested in the dev app changes when squid's hull was pulled down to 650 simply because even though manouverability was kept the same, the armor was increased to keep the ratio between two values even. This is kind of a lazy way to balance the squid and it's been in effect for the past one or two years (see: 950 hull squid) but it's worked very well so far because it provides a cushion for those times where squid is supposed to avoid damage but just can't because it's not quite there in terms of being a real mosquito. It wasn't infinite and managing that resource was possibly paramount to flying it agains't good teams. In-comes the real patch though, and this hull/armor ratio is completely thrown out of the window and squid still isn't fast enough to make it worth being that squishy.
-- In short, I understand your concern that the squid changes might hurt it too much agains't the un-nerfed goldfish, but I assure you that's more of a case of squid being underwhelming right now than fish being good. Mobula has also kept the throne for vertical mobility after the changes, and it's still pretty damn good.
I also wanted to free up design space for powerful medium guns for the Spire and Galleon, since the Goldfish has historically been the most effective at utilizing close-range heavy guns.
Actually, back when heavy flak used to be more or less overpowered it was extremely common to see it on goldfishes aswell. I'm sure RearAdmiralZill would tell you a lot about that if you brought the notion to him. Lumberjack had no arming time back then aswell, I wouldnt know but it was probably good on goldfish aswell. Probably still is.
I'll tell you the thing Hwacha, Carronade and Flak shared in common with fish's history though (leaving out minotaur for obvious reasons)
Flak could shred armor aswell as hull.
Carronade could pop balloons from medium range, close range, aswell as disable anything but a main engine in one shot.
Hwacha right now has somewhat respectable armor shred, a helpful amount of explosive damage and instant disables several components.
From what I can see these guns were prized on the fish because they were so versatile they could make themselves self sufficient on a ship that could abuse them. If there was a self sufficient/versatile long range heavy gun that would still be pretty good on the fish, because you're flying around with this long range gun as one of the fastest ships in the game with the weirdest angles for the enemy to shoot your armor with. Probably the better way to kill goldfish by design is to make all heavy guns unable to function well without the help of one another. There is some truth in goldfish being the best at utilizing close range heavy guns, but that's not necessarily a bad thing imo.