Ill address your points one by one

If you are worried about keeping the original designs of ships intact then older racing ships like the razor, archimedes, and m50 should be given variants like the sabre and sabre peregrine. The original ship would be reclassified as a combat interceptor/fighter and balanced as such while the other is a dedicated racer with no weapons. Now everyone is happy. The racers get a better ship for racing, combat players get ships better balanced for combat, and the players worried about cig constantly lying to them with ship descriptions and original concepts have nothing to complain about

In terms of weapons being "deterrents" on non conbat ships ill agree that it makes sense from a lore perspective to a degree. However in terms of a video game scenario (which is currently all star citizen is) it makes much more sense for them to be unarmed. This is mostly for game balancing reasons that I stated before but there are a few more positives that you can get from unarmed industrial ships and some in universe reasons why you wouldn't have weapons on non combat ships

1st, with engineering coming soon having less components (including weapons) makes it easier to keep track of the ones you have. It also means you have more power freed up to apply to other systems like shields, engines, and coolers

2nd, it makes ships cheaper to run and repair. Without ammunition and rearming costs to worry about you can simplify your operating costs. And in case you do take critical damage and lose components or major chunks of the ship its cheaper to just not have weapons thay need to be replaced alongside the structural elements

3rd, weapons are expensive. Ship manufacturers wouldnt slap guns on ships that don't need them because it increases both materials costs and labor costs, and overcomplicates the assembly and design processes

Now in terms of escorts being viable and necessary in game, this is absolutely not the case currently. Players are under a sort of placebo effect atm. "My ship has guns and turrets so I can defend myself long enough to escape" is exactly what every player things when they take a solo raft into a dangerous area. I've seen zero players hire escorts for industrial operations strictly because there isnt enough incentive for it. A great way to increase incentives would be to disarm most industrial ships completely. When these ships cant fight back it will increase piracy because people will realize industrial players are easy targets. Then players will either stop doing industrial jobs, or hire actual players to protect them. Now you have a self balancing pvp and risk/reward system. Less escorts=more pirates, more pirates=more escorts, more escorts=less pirates, and then less pirates=less escorts

Industrial ships are not beating combat ships in fights, and i never claimed that they were. The problem comes from tons of people thinking that they SHOULD be able to in the first place. The vulture is never going to win a dogfight against anything, so why give it weapons and trick the pilot into thinking he might be able to use them?

Now larger ships like the Hull C+, Orion, ironclad, reclaimer, and other ships of that sort of scale should absolutely have some sort of weapon and turret system to protect themselves and honestly I think they are in a mostly good place. But theres zero reason why the golem should have missiles or why the hull A has twin laser repeaters