>>1) Never play science ships. Science was nerfed hard just after launch
>>and while it's somewhat recovered, the benefits of a Commander Sci
>>station don't outweigh the disadvantage of only being able to run six
>>weapons. Apparently a Science revamp is being mooted for Season 9?
>>Watch this space.
>
>The secondary deflector on the Dyson ships is being expanded to all
>the Science ships, much like how Cruiser commands started out on the
>Avenger and Mogh battlecruisers.
>

This will go some of the way to helping, but given the secondary slot won't allow you to install standard deflectors (and for instance run two set bonuses) it's a partial solution. Apparently the devs are mulling over a major skill revamp, which will be good because the skill tree now is pretty dumb.

>>2) Beams + their damage boosting consoles + Beam Fire at Will is a
>>really solid strategy. Never mix weapon types or damage types. You
>>will see a lot of players who do this. They are bad.
>
>Or we give zero fucks about the math and just like pretty laser
>rainbows :)

To be honest with beam-boosting consoles this isn't the worst strategy ever now. It certainly let's you mx up the procs from each beam. The ones that really make me shake my head are cruisers (usually Galaxy-X class) running beams, cannons, turrets and with tactical consoles completely unrelated to their main damage type.