One of the main issues I've been finding with beam ships is that continuously scaling costs for more advanced beam fire controls as tech advances. With that in mind, I'd like to propose that its costs only scale with the multipliers applied to it, the tech advances being "free" bonuses.

Edit: In further thoughts: What I'd envision to make beam FCs better: Higher base cost to compensate a bit the non-escalating costs. "Sliding" values for range and speed instead of fixed multipliers, allowing for more precise fine control of the values, with a minimum and maximum value. Said value might just be the present 25% and 4x, or it could be set by tech, starting closer to 1 and increasing back to the present possible values (or other values, although that might present some issues with absolute max range due to light speed).