well, that's the real problem with the conquest, besides burn. giving something deliberately enough flux to sink half of it's weapons is pretty dumb and totally unique across the entire sweep of ships.
... dude. That's kind of rude, but perhaps more importantly, it's
dead wrong Not having enough flux to always fire all your weapons if you just stick the highest-damage guns in - that's just the game, right? A good loadout works with that and makes compromises between sustained firepower, alpha strikes, shields, etc.
In terms of flux dissipation, the Conquest is just about average for midline. If you compare it to the Eagle, it's actually got a bit more dissipation per ordnance point. (Edit: at least, this is the case with the new OP values. It's close, in any case.)
On the Conquest: one thing I'd like to have is an option to have a fixed-cost weapon-mirroring effect. Something like, oh, a unique-to-Conquest hull mod that costs, say, 60-ish ordnance points, shuts off manual editing of every weapon mount on the ship's left side (That's, let's see here, one large missile, two large ballistic, one medium missile, two medium ballistic, one medium energy, four small energy) and just mirrors whatever you installed on the right. Maybe even leave out the large missile slot; I can see wanting to make asymmetric use of those.
Basically: I don't like asymmetric loadouts from an aesthetic point of view, but - as Alex points out - using both broadsides at once isn't a particularly useful thing, and from a practical standpoint, it's better to leave one side mostly empty of weapons and spend those ordnance points on other things.
Yeah, I've been thinking about that in a different context - some slots just have more value. For example, the side-facing turret on the Aurora, you're just not going to want to put a heavy blaster in it. Or anything medium, most of the time. Or anything at all, depending on what else you've got and how tight ordnance points are.
(For the Aurora, what I did is make that slot "synergy", so there's an option to put a medium missile in there.)
Honestly, though, what you're suggesting is ... well, let me put it this way - in terms of game design aesthetics, I like it less than you like asymmetric loadouts
It's so much work and special rules for such a special case. I do get where you're coming from, though. It's an interesting design question, especially when expanded to consider less-useful slots in general.
Hmm. Obviously not for this patch, but I wonder - a hullmod that says "if you have at least X <specific weapon|weapon type>, installing more of those costs less OP/are free". Something like, "point defense package: 15 OP for cruisers, all small PD weapons are free". Or (for the Conquest) "ballistic package: 60 OP, large ballistic weapons are free". Eh, still a bit weird, wouldn't want that to dominate designs, and it probably would. Too much of a no-brainer to use in specific cases. Plus it gets weird UI-wise when you remove those...