Setup:
6 disruptor beam arrays
1 romulan experimental beam array
1 borg cutting beam

Target: 9.5km distant

With no attempts to mitigate power drain, average damage with the disruptors was 327.

With plasmonic leech (+2.2 power per hit, max +11) and chained Emergency Power To Weapons 1 (+22 power), average damage with the disruptors was 348.

With plasmonic leech, chained EPTW1, and 4 plasma manifolds (+14 power), average damage with the disruptors was 387.

That should be a total of +47 to weapon power.

However,
With nadion inversion, average damage with the disruptors was 487.

Just to recap, using leech and EPTW chain gained me 6% actual damage, while using every slot available for power consoles got me 18%. Turning off power drain got me 48% more damage.

Problem with beam arrays: power drain is insane and making every sensible effort to mitigate it barely helps.

You do know that ships are supposed to equip both, energy weapons and torpedoes?

Ouch. I already knew that controlling drain was the key with BAs, but I didn't know EPTW or even the Plasmonic Leech was so useless. That can't be 'working as intended.'

It makes sense that such powerful beam weapons will drain energy out of the weapon capacitators.

What does not make sense, though, is that there are weapons (all types of cannons, most notably the DHC's) for which this is somehow not the case, yet they do even more damage. WTF.

No surprise here. Since dev team is full of tac/escort loving DS9 fanboys

Even the Defiant herself had other weapons besides what could be interpreted as DHC's (or quad cannons). Notably Quantum torpedoes and at least one single beam array.

It is actually not that beam arrays drain too much power, it is that cannons drain too little.

The problem here is the amount of beams going off at the same time, no ship can handle that much and its even a tooltip!

The most I would pack on one ship is 5, 2 up front with 2 torps and 3 on back with a torp or the cutting beam.

I believe using 6 single beams achieves the maximum of beam DPS in a broadside. And I like that, because I can thus equip more than one type of weapon, which enriches my game experience.

Now compare a standard 4 DHC's, 4 turrets on a battlecruiser or Chel Gret, ir 4 DHC's, 3 turrets on any escort. It will still do insane damage with 7-8 energy weapons.

That's what's broken, and has always been since I started playing a year ago.

That would be true if beam weapons were actually powerful. This, however, is untrue: They are actually the most impotent weapons outside of turrets.

The problem with beam arrays, are that they cannot be linked. There should be just way to shoot one beam instead three with 3 beam arrays, if you link them. You would have reduced chance for procs, but increased base dmg, hence higher crits.