Which is why the proper use for beams is on fighter swarms too small to be picked up by enemy active search sensors. With ridiculous amounts of thermal reduction for added stealth.
It's impossible. NPR AMM sensor will pick up them on ~80m range. Then you can see the great old AMM spam.
If there would be any remake on beam weapon, I want to see some old-style battleship duel at ~100m or 200m range. But it will require remake on lock-on and hitting mechanic, and avoid focusing all firepower on one target. Some player put most sensors on one ship, it will be very bad to got it toasted in one salvo.
Maybe Steve could introduce random distribution on beam weapon hit. Beam weapon could lock on and fire at a battlegroup rather than a single ship , like what happens when you shoot bird flock with shotgun. And shield will be very valuable in this scenario, as we can't simply focusing all firepower on one ship to overcome it. But to avoid impenetratable shield, it may not recharge in battle, or only recharge when turned off.
I also want another two feature. It's annoying to assign hundreds of missile launcher on my ship, so I want "missile turret" to pack these launchers up. Build ship components with factory is a well-known trick to speed up ship building, I even use excel to optimize it, but I still hope we can simply build a "pack" including all components needed.