Beams are fine. HSA solved no problem and created more.
The only thing I wanted is endurance buffs, im thinking about hardened subsystem give more PPT and reducing CR reduction rate, efficiency overhaul for CR cost perbattle if the ship is unarmed/lightly armed by low recoil weapon like machineguns and beams.
HSA might as well not exist
HSA/Phase Lance Hyperion has been my best performing non-SO Hyperion build. The microscopic short range means getting the 30% bonus from energy expertise on each shot, and hyperion can get it self into and out of range with no problem.
If I were to try and fix HSA, I'd kill the range penalty but half the damage, and see where that lands. I'd like to keep the range if possible.
Here's my thoughts on beams.
Tactical Laser: It needs a total rework. It's basically irrelevant.
Gravitons: +50% more damage at a 50% more flux cost.
Tachyon Lance and HIL - Fantastic, keep them as they are.
Phase Lance - I prefer conceptually for them to be 1000 range. But I understand why alex shortened the range. Just look how succesful IR Autolance is at how low damage the IR Autolance actually is. Now imagine it hitting 10x harder on shields/armor and that's the phase lance.
PD (all of them) need some help, but Alex said he's already addressing it.
Paladin - Is getting help, but mainly it's problem is the perception. You give up a large slot for what? However, as most people haven't played with them, they don't know how strong they are. Paladins are stronger defensively than Devastators, and with S-mod E-mags, they go 50% harder. They are to clear nearly every fighter/missile from it's field of fire. And they are now getting buffed. The new Anubis brings 3 mounts designed intended for Paladins, and I think Alex hasn't really fully explored what this means. Normally the Meta is that you don't bother with mounting any PD, but Paladin Anubis takes that concept and legitimizes it, as it can single highhandedly handle all the PD needs from anything near by. There's a video out there where someone coded in what is reported an Anubis could do, and made a video of two Anubis completely neutralizing all the Ziggerat's sparks.
DEM. Directed Energy Missiles. Soft flux Beams on missiles. These I consider a failure. If you use it, you must use them fleet wide, as low numbers of DEM do nothing as they are all soft flux. But once you surpass a threshold your fleet goes really hard with them. Then you run out of ammo and you're fleet is totally out of gas and gets destroyed. If the other fleet has long distance PD, you're also dead in the water. Or if they have a phase ship baiting all the shots, you hit that out of gas quickly. On top of that Graviton DEMs are almost entirely worthless in the AI's hands. So I'd like to see DEM changed. I'd like DEM to be something between between normal weapons and omega missile weapons. So I'd like to see them have infinite ammo at a slow recovery, while costing a high amount of flux to "charge" the missile when it gets reloaded. So no free lunch, you have to make time to eat the flux for charging the missile, but you also don't run out or do hard damage. I think that's a good compromise, provided some extra tweaking on fire rates. And it gives an interesting dynamic in that it costs flux after it fires, not before, because it stores in the rack in a charged and ready to fire state.