You mean all 7 ships, 5 of which are civilian/carriers? Please.
The point is ignoring shield efficiency hurts beams against the few combat ships that have bad shields. Enforcers and Condors are relatively common opponents, especially early in the game; not to mention the Enforcer is a nice early flagship and one of the best ships that can kite in the game for its FP cost. The Conquest is a rare opponent, but beams ignoring shield efficiency would be a defensive buff to the player who pilots a Conquest flagship.
Ignoring shield efficiency also does not help against ships with 1.0 efficiency shields yet still take too much time to overcome their shields, and cannot without Advanced Optics to outrange the enemy.
Ok then, how about the part...
A single Onslaught alone is no match for an optimized Paragon, beams or otherwise. The test is when two or three Onslaughts plus smaller ships, say a couple Lashers here, a couple Enforcers there, and a wing of Broadswords or Piranhas all gang up on our lone fleet wrecking Paragon. Again, the optimized Paragon will win. What varies is time and damage taken.
I just played four battles with the Hegemony defense fleet, with the best perks from Combat and Technology skills.
(All beams - HIL, Graviton, Burst PD. Has Accelerated, Hardened, Frontal, and Stabilized shields. Has about 5 capacitors)Beam fight #1: Never faced more than one Onslaught at a time. Flawless victory. Fighting lasted about seven minutes.
Beam fight #2: Faced all three Onslaughts at once. Had to vent at least three times, and focus all beams at one Onslaught at a time. Won with 60% hull left. Fighting lasted about ten minutes.
(Plasma, Blaster, Needler, Burst PD combo. No shield hull mods. Has about 45 capacitors)PBN fight #1: Faced all three Onslaughts at once. Used fortress shield and wait until Onslaughts stopped firing Annihilators. Had to vent at inopportune times, and took heavy damage. Later, I got an opening and disabled an Onslaught from full to zero in less than five seconds. Won with 40% hull. Fighting lasted six minutes.
PBN fight #2: Faced first Onslaught alone, then after first volley, Onslaught #2 appeared with all guns blazing along with Lashers and Enforcers, and my fortress shield went up. Got half engines knocked out, but wiped out each ship one or two at a time. Faced third Onslaught solo, and was no match for me - two quick volleys at point blank and it was gone. Won with 60% hull. Fighting lasted five minutes.
The thing is, when beams work, say Paragon vs. any ship, or starter Wolf vs. enemy Lasher or Enforcer; they are almost always slower than non-beam energy weapons or non-fragmentation ballistics. That is fine, given their range and flux efficiency compared to other non-beam energy weapons. What is not fine is beams can be shut down completely. As long the AI remains too cautious to vent, other energy weapons will always do something despite their weaknesses.
I do not want the Paragon to be the only ship that can use all beams effectively against any ship. I like beams to be able to crush shields eventually and kill anything like every other weapon, so that any ship can do some damage with beams with a beam only setup. They do not need to do it nearly as quickly as other weapons, but they need to. The easiest way to assure this is to let beams deal hard flux under certain conditions. Beams can be the slow but steady weapon while the rest are quicker.