As it is, this just feels like a bit of a no-brainer to take. The biggest headache in running a 'huge' ship...even without all those amazing upgrades on them...is the staggering difficulty in keeping the weapons hot while trying to do anything else at all. And now we've got something fully the equal in advantages of most of the hardpoint upgrades with no corresponding disadvantage? I dunno...seems like a missed opportunity.
Requiring target locks to fire and having worse range limitations than most Hardpoint upgrades seem like disadvantages to me.
They kinda don't, though.
I mean, MOST missile or torpedo weapons outrange a Quad Laser Cannon (range 1-2, only). There is pretty substantial overlap with Ion Cannon Batteries, as well (they only reach out 1 more range band than missile/torpedoes can).
About the only hardpoint that compellingly out-distances missiles or torpedoes is the Single Turbolaser - although let's face it, burning 2 energy and only rolling 4 dice against an enemy whose agility is DOUBLED means you aren't going to be shooting this very often at anything but other huge ships.
So if fitting something out to directly fight other huge ships, itself, sure...the existing hardpoints make better sense. Against a fighter force, they really don't compete at all, and I think the power advantage means even facing a *mixed* enemy...the advantage strongly lies in being able to cut down energy usage so massively.
(And as to 'requiring target locks' - that isn't much of a disadvantage. The only thing pulling a TL is going to interrupt on the CR-90 or Raider is the 'coordinate' aciton...'recover' and 'reinforce' are unimpeded. And given huge ships always activate AFTER all small and large ships...there really isn't going to be any mystery, when they are taking their action, as to who is going to be in range/arc and who isn't.)
Edited by xanderf