Star Citizen is the best I can come up with right now.
Having a small, nimble ship, and coming across a large, expensive ship with a big crew, and tasking yourself with boarding said ship in order to steal it, take some plans, or destroy it would make for potentially thrilling gameplay.
Like I said in the OP, we all watch power asymmetry in our favorite media. The key is to design it so the non paying players can interact with the whales in an enjoyable manner. As I said in the OP, this implementation has been generally awful thus far.