Ballistics are more flux-efficient, but low-tech ships have way worse flux stats and more weapon mounts to spend flux on.
I think my issue is that I disagree with the tier system and would rather see useful diversity across all ships rather than being REQUIRED to hover over Tri-Tachyon's Achman(?) Station like a vulture waiting for the juicy OP stuff to pop up.
And yes, this is after grinding with a wolf or whatever to the point where you have the relations needed to access them.
-this means that the heavy 'challenge' aspect of the game currently, IMO, is in surviving/abusing food trade to the point where you can get a decent combat ship, then you grind crappy pirates, save enough to do a few BULK food trades, get your first 100-200k, pick up an Aurora (cause you have been grinding Tri-Tachyon space and the things are only uncommon, as opposed to sadistically rare like that frigate that can actually teleport as opposed to Phase Skim (the name is lost on me, but in 48lv worth of game play I have never once seen one for sale anywhere, in anycase, once you have the Aurora in hand, its time to solo fleets; cyclone reaper launcher, 4 small reapers, i dont even care what you use for your energy hard points, dont autofire them all unless they are beams or PD, missile specialization 10, augmented thrusters, front shield generator, and shield hardening for kicks.. its time to kill everything this game can throw at you.)
The only change I am concerned about is beams, specifically the loss of damage. I am not sure if the range and OP cost changes will offset that.
Beams are not main weapons, they are always support, if your killing something with beams that means you can kill it way faster with something way smaller using ballistics.
This was not immediately obvious when I first played Starsector. Back then, I thought graviton beam was an excellent shield killer weapon because of kinetic damage. What a fool I was. Eventually, I discovered the best shield-killer weapon for the likes of a Wolf is the heavy blaster. Beams really should get their own damage type, so people not familiar with everything will not mistake that beams are simply more efficient and prettier pulse lasers like I did.
I get that the Tactical Laser is a support weapon. Beams in general occupy a position in the weapon 'tree' of being the most Efficient weapons in the game, making them excellent secondary weapons. I agree with this. Blasters are amazing. all of them. Hands down. Early game, good luck getting more than the starting blaster, for me, finding even mining ones were hard early on. god help you if your starting blaster wolf goes a'splodin. It doesnt make sense to penalize a weapon that had a fairly risky quirk (energy damage based on flux level - honestly, so long as this scaled almost exactly with your % flux level, say maxing at +100% damage at 99% flux load, its fine, hell, evening making it so that it could only reach +50% damage at 99% flux load would be fine), especially when the better weapons are all fairly subject to availability <- and OMG does that ever apply to Ballistics.
WTF mortars? if you have a build that makes GOOD use of those PLEASE pm Me.
The best status condition to inflict on the enemy is death, not paralysis or insert other standard status effect. The best support weapons are those that kill the enemy as quickly as possible.
Turn off your shields unless you're about to take a big hit of HE damage or are fighting at noncommittal ranges. Your shields have terrible efficiency and using them to absorb damage in a brawl will quickly leave you capped out and unable to return fire. Instead, let your thick armor do its job and turn all that into hard flux for whatever poor bastard is trying to go toe-to-toe with you.
Frigates and/or most high-tech ships are too squishy to take hits. Some ships can tank well, but not all. Also, without Damage Control 10, taking hits even on hardy ships like Dominator will take its toll in big, long fights with one flagship vs. enemy armada.
early game you dont always have the firepower, range, speed to get a straight up kill in a fight. thus the place for the Phase beam and EMP in general. the Aurora is the best ship I know that can do what you mention here, simply because it has an alpha strike of over 14000damage. (I use Atropse(?)x4 torps, with reapers, it is substantially more.)
Turning off your shields... yaa.... early ships, HAVE armor, its true.. vs beams this isnt a big issue, except... the enforcer and dominator unfortunately have no room for flux to even fire all of their guns fairly consistently with the shields down. they run flux heavy such that using their shields sparingly, still means, when they are up and you take a big, say a reaper, hit, its gg. sure you arent DEAD. Yet. but torp bombers being ***, and you being overloaded, that usually changes quick.
The Doom is a great example of an Armor tanker.. but again, its a high-tier beast, with an AMAZING non-shield shield that the AI will abuse until it literally overloads itself. This is actually the ONLY fleet in the game I have found that gives me no end of grief - the mostly Cloaker fleet. it REQUIRES constant focus on 1 ship and or everyone grouping up in a ball so that Burst PD can kill. (no this isnt a fast fight, and their fleet can apply more dps than you can simply because it phases out 99.9% of it and actually has decent armor despite being very high-tier.)