I have been testing and playing it in my ludicrous sized game, turn 140, 15.000 parsecs under control. No issue. As for balance, it might alter it a bit, possibly. As I said in the readme, kinetic weapons are powerful but armor rating is high, so they can be countered. So if you persist in not adding armor onto your ship, as the AI often favor kinetic, you'll be for a bad time.
Beam, they are rather weak in damages, but shielding too, so this definitively change how they were. Now they are weapons you want to use when you want reliable damages, as you know that even with defense, defense should be low against them.
Also I have made sure that weapons had a variant not using strategic resources, and that these weapons were a decent alternative for your 'colonial ships', i.e ships a bit weaker when you must save on strategic resources. So they are also cheaper compared to the more experimental weapons.
I also fixed several inconsistencies in strat resource usage, as you know SD has difficulty fixing typos in their xml files. With all due respect.
