Halberd is more medium than slow. It's 2s faster than BL3 by default, also faster than quite a few missiles, glaive beam, and within 2-3s of most of the non-top tier 2-3 power weapons...but it hits a lot harder than any of its competitors in that charge time tier and can't miss (raked over piloting, it can help ensure other things also don't miss).
Not only can BL3 miss, but it's slower, takes more power, and its shots are spread out enough that beams lose damage to enemy shield recharging. Compare with flak 2 or arrangements of other mid tier weapons.
I'm generally not happy with 5 damage/flagship phase. It's less variance than risking 10 in one phase, but a single missile or laser hitting piloting and causing a fire can cause problems, even if piloting is at 2 you instantly lose significant evasion and risk it getting burned out completely at a bad time. Most cases you won't lose and can react with crew, but too much can go wrong still if RNG really doesn't like you. With your faster weapons you can continue to pile on after breaking missiles sooner, and I'm sure you did.
For most ordinary encounters hacked evasion can guarantee you won't miss, same for hacked shields --> beam of enough damage on piloting. Similarly cloaking through + tier 2 hacking weapons trivializes fights, I often go for ion oxygen deprivation or other crew-targeting strats if I have cloaking/hacking and enemy doesn't have multiple missiles of different types.
You're underestimating what putting "soft" ion damage on ships does in practice. I wouldn't be pushing it if it didn't result in the vast majority of possible encounters never firing those weapons again, and you've shown more than enough skill with other FTL setups that I doubt you'd struggle to take no damage with these just the same. The most annoying late game fights involve rebels or engi with dd2. You can ion-overpower evasion/cloaking pretty easily with high throughput or hybrid setups, but the tactics to fight dd2 with ions are IRL time consuming and annoying.
Not only can BL3 miss, but it's slower, takes more power, and its shots are spread out enough that beams lose damage to enemy shield recharging. Compare with flak 2 or arrangements of other mid tier weapons.
I'm generally not happy with 5 damage/flagship phase. It's less variance than risking 10 in one phase, but a single missile or laser hitting piloting and causing a fire can cause problems, even if piloting is at 2 you instantly lose significant evasion and risk it getting burned out completely at a bad time. Most cases you won't lose and can react with crew, but too much can go wrong still if RNG really doesn't like you. With your faster weapons you can continue to pile on after breaking missiles sooner, and I'm sure you did.
For most ordinary encounters hacked evasion can guarantee you won't miss, same for hacked shields --> beam of enough damage on piloting. Similarly cloaking through + tier 2 hacking weapons trivializes fights, I often go for ion oxygen deprivation or other crew-targeting strats if I have cloaking/hacking and enemy doesn't have multiple missiles of different types.
You're underestimating what putting "soft" ion damage on ships does in practice. I wouldn't be pushing it if it didn't result in the vast majority of possible encounters never firing those weapons again, and you've shown more than enough skill with other FTL setups that I doubt you'd struggle to take no damage with these just the same. The most annoying late game fights involve rebels or engi with dd2. You can ion-overpower evasion/cloaking pretty easily with high throughput or hybrid setups, but the tactics to fight dd2 with ions are IRL time consuming and annoying.