Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up?

[Suicide Junkie]

Yes!

No artificial categories, let the components speak for themselves!
Difficult to do, since you have to carefully balance everything and avoid the pitfalls of ubertechs.

However, not impossible, as the fighters in CBmod show...
As you research fighters, you get not only bigger ones, but smaller ones too. And special ones, like the ER fighter, or the stealth fighter.