Second vote for infra knife. Of course, has to be paired with the standard laser for leeching shield energy.

I've been resisting the urge to use save editor for the expedition out of fairness, but I've put enough hours into the game that I refuse to grind on my main save... for a laugh I set every slot on my S-tier fighter to supercharge, the infra knife is fucking ridiculous on that. Just BRRRR and the enemy ship is gone.

Interestingly, despite cheating on my main save unlocking every upgrade for every ship, and installing the solar sail, along with all other upgrades, enemy ships still run rings round me.