For anti-armor small energy already has an excellent option: am blasters.
To overgeneralize: energy ships that rely on AM blasters for anti-armor far too often get torn apart or fluxlocked by ballistic-based armor-defense ships before they get a chance to close enough for the blasters to do much. (Especially given that the mobility-increasing mods tend to further reduce range.)
(The other route would be trying to get ion damage to help against that sort of ship... but the ion cannon is
also shorter range than ballistics.)
This is mainly true for the AI, which far too often ends up burning/boosting into range of the ballistics (but not their own blasters) and then have no good way of retreating. Player control is far better at juggling that sort of charge+retreat, generally speaking.
(Alternatively, if someone has an AI build that doesn't suffer from this on an equal footing I'm all ears.)