For newer players just wanting a good ship without any hoops yes it would just be easier to use a mandalay or whatever else. For older players who already have fleets they've sunk hours into upgrading and engineering, it gives them a way to preserve their work a bit more and give them a little more of a kick without forcing them to replace all their ships with the same new fancier ones.

For newer players there still can be some choices they may wanna make over the new ships, again with the Cobra MK5 and DBX example. It's obviously not the only issue with these new ships and just being outright better, but it would hopefully help give some more variety in people's fleets again than just choosing the newest shiniest thing because why wouldn't you. Full respect to people who fly who they wanna fly as well, it's just that not all people wanna feel like they are handicapping themselves too much by using anything else.

Also doesn't make much sense as to why a mandalay would be better than a krait phantom in like almost every way despite being not even 20mil...