I think the hornet is just fine as it is, I don't see it as a combat rig for the unskilled, but as a specialist ship, it's great with rails, the weight helps steady your aim, and with flares, it can also be really nasty to anything hog-weight or better. Also I think it looks just fine, higher poly counts don't necessarily make models better.

Well, given that the newly developed dev tools make both changing things and changing them back if they do cause imbalance much easier I'd say try a bit of tinkering and see if it brings folk back in game .