I apologize if this has already been suggested but the other day I was wondering why there are no real direct offense artifacts. There are ship buffs to be sure and debuffs for your enemies but there are only directly damaging artifacts for defense such as omicron mines or thetacron mines and possibly a few others that don't readily come to mind. So my suggestion is a consumable artifact that can either be drawn from resources or gotten from a repeatable mission that can be used to directly damage an opponent, npc or pc. What it is called is of little concern to me. Perhaps something like an omicron torpedo or singularity missile or thetacron bomb. Even more interesting would be if it was a mission directly related to your researched weapon tech and so players with advanced weapon research could produce progressively more powerful missiles/torpedoes. I know you've got a lot on your plate with the bi-weekly missions, base combat, badge rewards, etc. Just chipping in my two cents about something that would fill out the combat aspect of the game.

Krionite Torpedo - does full damage to shields.

Yeah, but that is just one torpedo. The mission does not give you many, the only other way is to get a Dark Smuggler Carry thing.....