My concern with having normal fighters be "the cheap ones" is that it means they are almost always a poor choice. The only time you actually want to pick them is when you absolutely can't afford something better. This also means they will be sold off and upgraded to another fighter type as soon as possible, and have no late game use. Most players will probably just wait and buy bolter drones.
Having laser drones excel at shield damage makes sense, but it has a problem. Right now shield damage isn't useful. Enemy ships have very low shields at all difficulties, and enemy missiles and fighters only have hull. If you want shield weapons to be more important, you don't need to make them stronger yet. Instead I suggest making certain enemy races (celestial and schillae?) have significantly more shields. I think it would also be really cool if the missiles from the photon launcher required shield damage to shoot down. After shield damage has been made useful with a change like this, then it starts to be important to balance modules doing shield damage. Right now the only way laser drones can ever be more effective than bolter drones is if they do more hull damage, which would be silly. Increasing enemy shields will also make missiles a more attractive option again. Right now they aren't as great as other weapons because it is so easy to remove an enemy's shields.
