[Excalibur]

The fighter beam I made was just an edited ULTRA anti-fighter beam, so the mass factor was probably still the same.

Imagine flak on bombers - more invincibility since you can't sit behing them as easily.

The Shivans would be stupid and end up flakking their owm bombs!

[morriscat]

copy i-war

This is really the best answer, but I think in the end, your main problem is the FS2 pilot AI. Iwar is fully newtonian, and when the ships are capable of moving as fast as they're willing to spend the time accellerating to, dogfighting really requires a mutual agreement to stay at speeds that allow the ships to stay within range of each other so they can shoot. This works out pretty well when the AI is designed around it, but when you give the FS2 AI the ability to move that fast, it will.

After playing with $Glide a lot, it really seems like the best compromise. FS2 AI seems to use it pretty effectively, and it allows you to do most of the stuff you'd want to do with Newtonian flight anyway.

[General Battuta]

beams are energy...and cant knock you around unles its actualy a stream of flaming compressed gas. but flak, on the other hand, is artillery in space.

I believe the beam weapons are plasma. Plasma is a stream of matter on the verge of becoming energy (essentially, as you said, flaming compressed gas.) They're quite capable of knocking ships around, I'd imagine.

Even a pure energy beam would deliver a sharp kinetic impact due to the vaporized armor and internals venting from the target.