Reading some replies there seems to be confusion as to what the Eagle and Falcon do. The Eagle and Falcon do not "punch down" like we think about killing swarming frigates and destroyers. A bunch of frigates and destroyers is a weakness of theirs because all their ballistics are pointed forward. What the Eagle and Falcon do is stalemate the flux war against a single enemy. You spend 14 or 22 DP and you remove an enemy capital (not radiant) because your falcon is just a pain in the butt the entire time. Falcons and Eagles should, almost always, be given harass orders on enemy capitals or heavy cruisers.
And they should be fit as such. Annoying and to keep the shields up. They provide a line to defend your carriers and to win the flux war on the front side. And they're actually good at that.
How is there nothing to support an Ion Beam, there's literally 3 ballistics lol. But the problem with Ion Beam is its flux cost.
Ion Pulser is great even for non-SO ships, Eagle is just a bad ship for it.
Pulse Laser was actually buffed recently to 1.0 flux efficiency. It has its uses, unfortunate part is that cruisers don't want it if they want to actually deal damage to other ships bigger than a Hammerhead.
Thankfully we're getting 2 new medium energy weapons next patch (although harder to acquire).
Yea and indeed Ion Beam is pretty best case on the Eagle. Not only does it have a lot of support but because the eagle is symmetric with a single Ion beam you can use the other energy slots for anti-fighter pretty well. A Falcon will not have coverage from one side, and so fighters they get close will penetrate the defenses. The Falcon also doesn't quite have the flux to use the weapon and still fire its ballistics either.
I can definitely see entirely reasonable eagles fit with
3x HVD or 2x HVD 1x Heavy Mauler OR 3x HAC or 2x HAC 1x Heavy Mortar
+1 Ion Beam or even +2 ion beams
+ ITU and basically who cares/Fighter defense/Capacity and Dissipation.
Almost its entire problem from a design perspective is that you could bring three falcons for 2 eagles and have 2 DP left over. And the 2 eagles would bring 6 ballistic, 2 ion, and 4 heavy burst* Beams 30,000 flux capacity and 1800 dissipation. And the three falcons would bring 6 ballistic, 30k flux capacity,
2100 dissipation, and 6 heavy burst but also be faster and wider and so be able to absorb more harass orders and will spread the enemy fleet out wider. The Ion Beams simply are not good enough to justify being slower and shorter.
*actually kinda good anti-fighter/missile for low flux now. Would be better if they didn't shoot at HE missiles unless your shield was down though. I fit this to be equivalent but i think that Falcons are better with 2x HVD 2x Phase Lance when harassing. Since it gives them a bit more protection from frigates and Falcons are more likely to randomly end up alone than eagles are. Plus Falcons have a much easier time avoiding saturation missiles. It also means they can push when they have an advantage. You could also run 2 phase lance on the eagles but don't want the eagles to get any ideas about getting close and i like the superiority value of killing saturation missiles too.
If the Eagle Cost 20 then you have 20 DP for 2 eagles vs 42 for the Falcons. You get 4 DP to shunt elsewhere. And as you add ships up that 4DP starts to matter. If the eagle is to stay 22 DP it should be faster. At 4 Eagles vs 6 falcons you would have 8 more DP, which might bump up the rest of your ships. Your 4 omens can become 4 scarabs. Rather than the other way around.
edit
I am not entirely sure whether or not i like 2x Swarmer in the missile (anti-fighter until enemies are out of missiles ) and Heavy Burst (takes over when enemy is out of saturation missiles) in the 2 side medium or i like Graviton in the medium (for the push effect on saturation missiles)