You guys need to understand what 4.0 is and what Hardcore is.
4.0 was Firesoul's attempt to get every singe ship that was published in SFB literature into an SFC shiplist. Balanced or not, if it's in an SFB publication, it's in there.
This includes limited deployment (read: rare) ships, unique ships, conjectural (read: never built) ships, etc. As many have observed, and FS himself has acknowledged, 4.0 is not always balanced for game play. Rather, it is a complete and exhaustive library of whatever has been published in SFB.
The problem with that is as a general use shiplist it includes stuff which was rarely or never flown in the future history of the General War. A lot of these ships are overused on GSA, as they are great ships for their BPV but not really balanced in comparison to line ships which made up the bulk of the forces which fought during the GW. Certain battle tugs and heavy war destroyers make great examples.
Hardcore eliminates some of these classes and instead highlights the ships which actually would have been historically flown. So now at 130 late you will be facing light cruisers instead of some cheesy HDW. At 200 mid you will be facing an early dreadnought instead of an overpowered battle tug. (Battle tugs in particular were extremely rare, since tugs were much more valuable to build/upgrade/repair bases, resupply/repair fleets, etc.)
So if you are looking for maximum cheese at every possible BPV then hardcore is probably not for you. If you want a fair and challenging fight at every BPV where pilot skill matters more than cheese selection, than Hardcore probably IS for you.