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[Megas]

1) If the player has a tool to win a fight more efficiently, they'll do it even if its incredibly boring. Back when beams were hard flux (and shorter ranged, but still outranged light ballistics IIRC) this was the go to play for starter wolves, and its just not interesting: you just point at the enemy and wait. Now with CR there is at least a time limit, but between hardened subsystems, wolfpack, etc it would be easy to just chain deploy like 3 wolves to very boringly kite many early game threats in perfect safety. Boring but optimal content is bad game design.

When was this?  Before 0.53?

During later Starfarer (before the name change to Starsector), Wolf could win because early pirate ships' dissipation was bad enough that Graviton and three Tacticals had enough soft flux to overcome dissipation.  Without PPT/CR, Wolf could beam as long as it takes to win.

I remember trying classic starter beam Wolf in a post-0.6 version years ago, after PPT/CR was in, and I could not win the same way as done in Starfarer because PPT was too short for that to work.

[Amoebka]

I still don't see the fundamental difference between Brawler laming and Wolf laming. Brawlers can be caught by faster frigates, and wolves can also be caught by faster frigates (SO and/or UI), both get caught by fighters and missiles. Brawlers have more counters, but ultimately both do have counters.

The argument about "not being able to do anything", again, applies to both. If my fastest ship can't catch up to a Brawler, I "can't do anything" either. Running slow ships only with no fighter support is a bad strategy and deserves to be punished by a niche rare build. Also, you can always at least safely retreat from beams as they take ages to kill.

And mind you, frigates with hard flux beams still get outranged by many larger ships. They have to dart in and out, just like normal, and bigger ships can dissipate in-between.