Testing Eagle XIV with Falcon XIV and Champions, against double Ordos, again ends up with it doing around 5-to-4 to the Falcon XIV. The results were:
DP % dam Ship
75 37.1% 3 Champions (Squall, Plasma Cannon, 2 HVD, 2 Tac Lasers, with Xyphos, EMR, and ECCM)
68 31.8% 4 Eagle XIV (3 HVD, 3 Phase Lances, 2 Tac Lasers, LR PD Laser, 2 Breach, with Xyphos and AO, base flux 700, 17 DP)
70 31.2% 5 Falcon XIV (2 HVD, 2 Phase Lances, Tac Laser, LR PD Laser, 2 Breach, with Xyphos and AO)
All had level 6 officers. I just sat back and let them handle the double Ordos without piloting a flagship, although I gave commands as needed.
Over 90% of the damage done by the Eagles and Falcons were from the HVD, Phase Lances, and Tac Lasers. It seems like the Eagles had more total weapons (12 HVD, 12 Phase Lances, 8 Tac Lasers, compared with the Falcons' 10 HVD, 10 Phase Lances, and 5 Tac Lasers), yet they ended up with close to the same amount of total damage, so the Eagles are a bit less "efficient" in that they didn't fire them as much as the Falcons, possibly due to the Falcons being faster at chasing down a target and moving on to the next target. The Falcons also tended to do more hull damage, even though they have pretty much the same weaponry, which implies that they were able to finish off targets more readily. (A higher proportion of shield damage for example implies that the target was able to back off and vent.)
Even so, the Eagles weren't too shabby at finishing off targets, if they got within range of its Phase Lances. It's kind of fun watching enemy ships stroll in, taking some damage from the HVDs and Tac Lasers, then suddenly get a massive damage spike, then try to limp away while still under fire. For both the Eagles and the Falcons, the Phase Lances did around half of the ship's hull damage, the HVD's did around 20%, the Tac Lasers did around 20%, and then the rest for the remaining 10%. So (funny enough) even the Tac Lasers were useful for some hull damage, probably as the target tried to limp away, but a lot of it was done by the Phase Lances.
So in terms of their overall real-world damage output against double Ordos, the Eagle XIV looks close enough to 17 DP or 18 DP compared with the Falcon XIV or the Champion. I think 18 DP might be better because 17 DP feels "too close" to the Falcon, but that's just me.
As for 20-DP ships, right now for me the elephant in the room is the Gryphon, which is far too powerful for 20 DP. However, that's largely due to putting Missile Spec on it, which gives it around 65% more damage output. Gryphons without officers are weak, but with officers can kill off large numbers of ships without them getting close due to this skill. So it might be more appropriate to tone down Missile Spec's rate of fire to like +20% or something instead of the current +50%.
That's why I don't think the IR auto lances are going to fix anything either, they sound like low output weapons, and eagle is lacking output.
The Tac Lasers put out a surprising amount of damage, even though they're just 75 DPS weapons. So it will depend on the actual stats of the IR Autolances. Although the IR Autolances will be medium energy and thus compete with the Phase Lance, rather than competing with the Tac Laser.
This should make it terrible against shields(1/4 damage and no hard flux) and even worse against armor(1/40 the damage I believe since beams "tick" ten times per second)
That's not how it works, yes the damage ticks 10 times per second or thereabouts, but the hit strength is set at half of the beam's fully-on DPS, regardless of how many times per second it does damage. This is unlike projectiles where the hit strength matches the damage-per-shot of the projectile. So if the beam ends up doing 200 DPS while it's on, then its hit strength is 100.
But as a frag beam it does 25% damage to armor and also 25% of its hit strength against armor and hull (so, in the above example, if it's 200 DPS while on, its hit strength would end up being...25), so yeah, it's not going to do much to armor. Frag weapons tend to have high DPS though so it will depend on the numbers that Alex gives it.