In a kiting situation there are two groups:
1. the fastest group - It gets to dictate range and disengage if you get in trouble
2. not the fastest group - it doesnt get to dictate range and has no ability to disengage.

So you want all ships to be the same speed?

Good points.

Let us consider a different direction.

It seems to me the problem is in webs. That is what has led us here. The range is too short and they do too little. The fastest race has become the best because the counter to speed is now more speed. (Longer range webs could have countered the nano ships of old too.)

I have been saying for a long time that webs need falloff. Scripts to create trade-offs are another option. Small/medium/large modules should also be considered. A long range and short range module separation, in conjunction with other changes, could help. Long ago skills to affect web/scram were planned and scrapped. They should be revisited.

Question:

If the web, with maybe a cap use drawback, had falloff to reach the long range scram mod, how would that change the Hurricane/Hurricane match? Could this be the answer to the problem? This also would help the Caldari, who shield tank better but do not have the speed advantage. It seems to be Minmatar and webs as the problem; not armor drawbacks and shield advantages.

If the problem was really shield tanking, several Caldari ships (besides the Drake) would be in the place of Winmatar (who displaced the Drake more than once with the Cane). Now that ASBs are in game they have seen a boost, but that does not explain the older speed (perhaps not armor at all) problem.

So you want all ships to be the same speed?

I agree, webs could fix the problem but, I feel like the problem with this is balance. It would be almost impossible to balance those webs. They would either be useless or they would make shield ships useless.

ASBs are stupid and should be pulled from the game. If active shield tanking needed a buff they should have looked into tweaking the stats on shield boosters, not introducing a cap-independent version that has almost zero fitting drawbacks.

Firstly, we are very aware of the many problems we're facing in tanking design at the moment. The balance between active and passive tanks, and between armor and shield (and honour) tanking are both in need of work. ASBs have made parts of this problem better (adding new interesting gameplay and making "active" tanking more popular) while making other parts worse (too good in many circumstances, and skewing the meta further towards shield). Armor and shield tanking balance suffers because mass (and velocity) penalties are far more severe than signature radius penalties in most circumstances, and to a lesser extent because of the difference between shield hitting at the start of a cycle and armor hitting at the end. This is especially harmful for active tanking Gallente blaster ships that need that speed to get within range.
These problems are real and we are working on them, but the solution isn't to skew the ships themselves too far in the opposite direction. Our goals are to hit the problems at their source.

Putting races into roles (RPG 'class' system) is harmful, yet its what CCP did so far. IMO every race should have ships viable for all the roles (skirmishing in small gangs, or ships with significant buffer and projection fro large scale fights), yet remain distinctive, and have weak and strong points.