Oh for the love of smeg......
This is one thing that REALLY grinds my gears in wargaming.
People are far FAR too quick to throw their hands up in horror and scream 'broken' at any ship that performs well.
As for comparing the Ka'Tan to the Prefect?!?!??! Are you NUTS?!
Theres more to ships than just the number of beam dice they get!
Lerts stop and compare the two ships for a minute:
Fire arcs. Both ships are basically forward arc only. Theyve got some secondary weapons in the side and rear but theyre really nothing to write home about so I wont really factor them in here.
Weapon range: The Primus can engage properly at 12" and can start firing at you from 25". The Ka'Tan can engage fully at 15" but isnt really much of a threat before that point. Both ships are fairly fast though so can engage when they like for the most part in range terms.
Manueverability: The Prefect is SLIGHTLY more maneuverable due to being slower but in practice its WEAPONS are quite a bit easier to bring to bear due to their forward arc.
Firepower: The Prefect packs slightly more than double the forward firepower than 2 Ka'Tans. Sure more of the Ka'Tans stuff is beam but dont forget, the Prefect with its forward arc can both use its stuff every turn (normally) without needing to win initiative, but can also concentrate fire. That makes a HUGE difference.
Toughness: 2 Ka'Tans DO have slightly more hit points than 1 Priums, but theyre hull 5 compared to the hull 6 of the Prefect. Massive, MASSIVE, difference. Also it only takes 15 damage to cripple one of the Ka'Tans and start reducing the effeciveness of that little team. 20 points and one is gone the firepower of that raid point worth of ships is halved (and your down an initiative sink for your boresights). It takes 27 points to CRIPPLE the Prefect and start reducing its firepower.
Really if you think the Ka'Tan is even CLOSE to the prefect in terms of wrongness though, play a fight between 2 Ka'Tans and a Prefect and see what happens. Hell try a full on 10 Ka'Tan bat squad vs 5 Prefects (actually that Id like to try sometime, could be interesting).
The trouble with the 'Bat Squad' really though is NOT the Ka'Tan/Ka'Toc in my oppinion its the way ACTA works in general. It tends to favour swarm fleets becuase of the way initiaitve works. ANY swarm of decent Skirmish ships is a nasty prospect:
Cases in point: 10 Saggs (even with the now fixed version (which I dont think are broken any more are still very very good), 10 Olympus, 10 Ka'Tans, 10 Warbirds, 10 Drakh Raiders, 10 Maximus (actually thats one I havent actually seen tried... could be very very nasty, all that hull 6, interceptory uber toughness? Where do I sign up

)
In fact I reckon we should do tourney on vassal or even in real life some time of 'skirmish gank fleet playoffs' everyone builds a fleet of 10 of one skirmish vessel and see who wins (it would have to be a friendly tourney though not for prizes or anything as I dont think that would be strictly fair!) (and I still reckon the 10 saggs will spank all before them (though the NBS is very very nasty still)