It's much more powerful than that. The Polaris has cap ship radar, while the Tally is medium. Since Torps have greater range than guns, this makes an enormous difference in the way the ships can be used. Add to this that the Polaris can support spotting ships like the Ghost Hornet, Tracker, Space Turtle and Eclipse, and you start to see it is an astonishing war machine. Unless you have a way to thwart S10 torps suddenly appearing on your radar, they are much to be feared. I expect they'll be expensive, so the smaller ships may have less reason to fear than the juicier targets. IIRC, I saw some Connies go down with just a single S9 torp from the Eclipse.
Odds are if you ever see that, your time to leave is over, and it's time to respawn.