The idea behind the skills, I'd assume, is that the ROF increases are as a result of your character optimizing the systems so the guns can just fire faster.
With a beam, that doesn't make sense. Having skills that might increase the potency of beams might be cool (Do we have any? I haven't actually checked) but keeping them separate just makes sense.
And let's be honest, it's a lot easier to aim a laser than it is to aim a gun, so it also makes sense for accuracy bonuses to be irrelevant to beams. Although beam recoil with burst lasers would be kinda cool. I wonder if that's possible now?
If you're after some sort of " real " lore based explanation for increased fire rate on a beam based weapon... you shouldn't.
It doesn't bother you that the only bonus a beam based ship gains at high/max CR is damage reduction?
I'd like to point out that an increase in DPS by boosting ROF also lead to a rise in flux generation so it's not completely without drawbacks.
Another point is that most beam weapons receive the supercharge bonus so in a sense, while their flux ratio start at 1-1, they are getting more and more powerful as your flux pool increase.
Of course , but in most cases ballistic weapons are used for burst damage to either overwhelm shields or exploit a lowered shield. Cramming more damage into those crucial moments is a huge bonus.
That's true but have you sat down and compared the numbers between ballistic and energy based weapons?
A Tactical laser for example does a maximum of 112.5 dps ( 75 base, +50% from MAX flux) which is a 0.66(r) Flux->Damage ratio, which is great!
However that's not particularly reasonable, very few ships are willing to sit on maximum flux, or are even capable of doing so with all weapons firing so often weapons are only firing in short bursts, so lets lower that number down to 25%. Which brings the dps up to
93.75 and a 0.8 flux/damage ratio.
Now compared to a Dual Autocannon, the same OP cost, the same range, 143 dps, 1-1 flux/damage ratio. At Max CR and with the appropriate skill ( assuming it's additive) you can get a 50% fire rate increase, bringing the dps up to
214, still at a 1-1 ratio.The total dps per slot is significantly better for ballistic weapons, not only that but they all have the benefit of causing HARD flux which can force the inevitability of lowering shields, overloading, venting, increasing their potential damage even further without the downside of requiring high flux to maintain efficiency and damage.
It's also worth noting that Ballistic weapons for the most part do Kinetic or High Explosive damage with only one exception that comes to mind, while Beams all do energy damage (Except the Graviton).
2 Tactical lasers vs 1 Dual Autocannon and 1 Light Assault Gun at MAX CR and appropriate skill
187.5 dps, .8 ratio VS 214 Kinetic, 240 high explosive, 1-1 ratio... So vs shields it does
548 dps at a 0.82 ratio against shields and vs armor it does 587 dps at a 0.773 ratio. All the while generating hard flux.
Quick reminder that LOWER flux->damage ratios are betterThat's a pretty crazy difference : /