Sorry, but I'm with Lightspeed on this one. The beams are way too...not beam-ish. They don't look like a beam is charging up. Rather, they look sort of like...one of your glow-in-the-dark stars that you tack with gum onto your ceiling and you retro-fitted it to a FS2 beam.
Now about Woolie and Chrono. I am completely behind Woolie on just about all the points. The Lucifer was a weak ship. If you don't recall, somewhere mentioned that whatever Shivans the GTA and PVN fought during FS1 were only a taskforce (I believe it states that on the back of the original FS2 gamebox). Do you ever see the Lucy running in multiples? Hell no. But you have an assload of Sathani don't you? Lucy blew up Vasuda Prime. Sath blew up the Capella sun. Difference? Besides, you can't really call the Lucifer's beams...well, "beams." It was called the "Shivan Super Laser" for a reason. It was designed to completely mutilate the **** out of the Terrans and Vasudans, and also scare the **** out of them too (and it did that well, AT THE TIME). And besides, don't you think the Sath would easily take out a planet with its four forward beams (it DID take out an entire galaxy, although by supernova, still took it out).
Just because the Lucifier took out an entire species (and who's to say it wasn't the Sathani instead), it doesn't mean it was UB3R advanced. It only had TWO beams. Besides, the Lucifer was probably the only thing the Shivans had back then (of course taking from your argument that the Sath probably didn't exist back then anyway). How can you say the Lucy is stronger just because you don't know that the Sath hasn't taken out an entire race?
The Prometheus cannon in FS1 can no way compare to that of FS2's. Why? Simply put, the Prometheus cannon never existed in FS2. There's a reason why there are the Prometheus R and S in FS2. Contrary to what you may believe, the Prometheus R (for Retro-fit) is a lot closer to the original FS1 Prometheus. They built that cannon from long ago, and because of lack of resources to continue building it, they built a retro-fit version for cost-effective purposes. The Prometheus S came around as an upgrade. And the main reason it's so different is because it's supposed to kick more ass than the FS1 cannon did. Besides, the FS1 cannon is half the size of that of the Prometheus S, primarily because the Prometheus S has a fatass extended...thing for, as I said, kicking ass. Can't really say it's a barrel 'cause it doesn't shoot two globs. It sucks a lot more energy too.
Anyway...back to the beams. I really don't like 'em cuz...well, beams don't charge up like that. They'd be ok if they only showed up that way when the beams are discharged...but charging up? What kind of beam charges up with energy already exerted in the form of ... spikes (or flares, if I have that right)? The beam must first gather it's energy into the core and then fire it, correct? I just don't think it makes sense. Plus, the beams are just BIG (and I mean all the beams I've seen in here, except the ones that LS showed), and most of them and their flares intersect the hull of the ship that they are firing from...not exactly giving them a smooth effect. Looks kinda ugly...
Woooh....sorry for the text-heaviness.