First off I must admit I have hardly played this mod and I am struggling to wrap my head around how it overhauls weapon damage and armour penetration compared to base 5x.

IIRC in this mod armour can reduce incoming damage down to 25% of base weapon damage instead of only 75% as stated in the armour resilience tooltip in the blueprint screen. However, with miniaturisation and the limited incremental benefits of high tech weapons in this mod, I am wondering if weapons ever actually become obsolete. Or, in other words, are higher-tier weapons even worth it?

As an example. if I calculate DPS per unit of hull space (factoring in armour penetration and available weapon mods too), Phasors offer 30% increase damage over the humble Laser, but they do so at 8 times the production cost! That difference is enough to double the price of a frigate or increase the cost of a cruiser by around half, more than offsetting the extra damage. This suggests that Lasers are far more economical for arming one's fleet while still remaining somewhat viable at high tech levels. Therefore, until you reach your command point limit, the best way to strengthen your fleet is to churn out loads of ships with cheap old-fashioned weapons.

The one complicating factor I can think of in this is shield damage absorption. Does it still work even when shields are down? If so, then that would be THE determining factor for Laser obsolescence.

However, even then you might be fine just always sticking with Lasers for point defence as they don't have to contend with shields. Miniaturised Neutron Blasters also seem to offer an economical alternative to Phasors at 1/3 of the cost. They are even comparable to Phasors in their performance against shields up to Class X!

Gauss Cannons compare similarly poorly for economy against the more basic Mass Driver. For the equivalent hull space but more than double the price, the Gauss Cannon offers 15 extra range and a measly 4% extra hull damage. Hard Shields will make the Mass Driver obsolete but then you wouldn't want to be using Gauss Cannons anyway.

Perhaps I just need to playtest, but these high-tier weapons seem totally underwhelming when compared against older miniaturised tech that is almost as effective but so much vastly cheaper. Am I missing something in all of this?