You want weapons that are good againt armor and shield and deal hard flux.
That is energy's gimmick, at least those that do not exceed 500-700 range. I want one my ship can use without filling up on flux too fast, especially against ballistics users or enemies with tough shields that would have no problem winning the flux war unless two or more ships gang up on it. All of the medium weapons are a bit too flux hungry for some ships (midline, some high-tech with bad flux stats). Heavy weapons do not have this problem. The medium ones are really annoying due to bad efficiency. (Pulse laser is the closest, but not all ships can support it comfortably.) Small only has IR Pulse Laser, which is too short-ranged for assault (but is decent as PD for big ships).
I do not want uber weapons, just better variety of gap fillers (or the existing ones buffed). This is not unlike medium HE when Heavy Mauler became the only viable medium HE weapon when Chaingun became a SO-only melee weapon (450 range instead of 700).
IR Pulse Laser has terrible range. If I had 600 range, it might be okay. As it is, too short-ranged (and not powerful enough, if IR Pulse Laser already struggles against light ballistics) to substitute for medium weapon.
I would be perfectly happy with a low-end medium or high-end light 600 range hard-flux weapon that did low-200 DPS and have no worse than 1.0 efficiency. It would be useful for Wolf and midline ships, those that have trouble supporting the current weapons.
**as a semi-aside, stacked tac lasers are really powerful. Especially on fast ships. The damage is low but the accuracy and range mean you have trouble getting away and an ease of dealing damage. Each tac laser deals a minimum of 11.25 armor damage/second. Which doesnt seem like a lot until you try to take a 10 second vent getting hit by 5 of them. A 150 dps tac laser would just destroy ships. It would be hilarious.
This is where I disagree with the others that brought this up before. Few ships can stack that many on their own, and even those that do, they are not that strong, especially to give up other weapons like PD to make it work. Six tactical laser Eagle is one, and the kill speed is not very fast. If it was very effective, I would use it more. As it is, I prefer other loadouts partly because I do not like giving up PD, and the sacrifice is not powerful enough for the trade to be worth it. (No IPDAI to add PD. IPDAI on Tactical Lasers kills the stacking, and is too slow to work well.)
P.S. If I really want an uber weapon, I would want a Defender-style smart bomb or Gauntlet potion powered by Wizard that flashes the screen and all enemies on the map explode and die instantly, for an instant win. That is even stronger than those '80s arcade games since they only kill the screen and not the whole level.