Essentially the battle-razors for cruiser/battleships (not sure about gunboats) are replaced with the shock rays, which are completely useless compared to their old counterparts. The smaller zappers are also rather terrible, compared to Solaris. Since the beam effect isn't actually where you're hitting, its a major pain to try and hit anything compared to Solaris or even secondary turrets. And the large shock ray is just as bad, even worse because it takes up a heavy turret slot, and takes quite a bit of energy, whilst still have mediocre accuracy, and here's why.
All the shots from these "beam" weapons follow -exactly- where the gun is pointing. And you'll probably notice that with any other gun, projectiles can come out of the weapon at a slight angle, making it much easier to hit things and making the game, imo more playable. This effect is also the same that the battlerazor had, however its replacement doesn't have this, so you have to be very lucky to hit anything with it. At the moment, they have a misleading effect (whilst the actual projectile is completely invisible), and have to be facing directly at the target or they miss.
tl;dr Yes, the large shock ray is very underpowered, borderline useless compared to what it's trying to phase out (Battle razor).
