I am all for this, but there has to more balance to how you go about designing. Also when starting a new topic for people to discus about, you need a semi-working idea before hand. Like; Heat sinks are size modifiers but reduce RoF (1.25x size, 80% reload), Capacitors adjust power required vs damage and reload (more capacitors = more damage and slower reload), Barrel width adjusts damage compared to range (bigger barrel = more damage but lower range), Barrel length modifies damage and range but is a size multiplyer (2x size = 1.5x damage and 1.25 range), etc.
I think there should also be beam type specific techs (like the laser wavelength) for rails, plasma, etc.
Rail techs; Shell types (scatter, solid shot, seeker shells, explosives, etc), Rail magnetic (velocity), Rail numbers (multiplyer to size and velocity/damage), Burst fire or autoloading (burst making it more like a Gauss but requires a larger charge time. Autoloading is exactly how we have it.), etc.
Plasma techs; Generator boosting (multiplies damage and power required), Flow control (lets it fire every increment at a slightly reduced damage but a massive power requirement), etc.