This is probably an important discussion for this phase of weapon development, actually. You're bringing up some major issues that I think have been widely regarded as inescapable ('it is known') and so left aside from discussion about improvement.
That only works for pretty small ships. And if you make the power draw too big it would cripple small ships that want more than a couple of weapons.
I don't think a scaling power draw from high numbers of weapon systems would even affect small ships. I was responding directly & specifically to the long-established practice of evading the fundamental power checks on weapon output numbers by creating waffles and other arrays using separate computers for each output. That is an issue of dozens or
hundreds of outputs, not 5 or 10 different weapons on a ship.
There is no risk that a power curb designed around dissuading an engineer from installing 10+ un-linked weapon systems on his turret to achieve a waffle while dodging the original curb could possibly impact a small ship. Unless it was also explicitly attempting to evade the standard power curb. If anything, this sort of check would require more nuance to prevent harming large ships that might legitimately be packing 10 different weapon systems on a
single entity.
It should innately be beneficial to have a big weapon instead of multiple small ones when fighting against a single opponent. But, naturally, it should not be beneficial if you are fighting against multiple opponents with total mass being similar to yours. Trying to balance it through gate measures just leads to people trying to find exploits that allow them to work around them.
The thing is, it already
is beneficial to use one big weapon instead of multiple small ones, and people have
already found exploits to work around it - multiple computers, massed DEs, etc. Well, those aren't really exploits, just massive loopholes that were never closed.
So that's not what
will happen, that's what already has happened. Problem A is not a problem that arises from closing the loopholes that facilitate Problem A. That seems circular.
Meanwhile, I might be mistaking your meaning, but to say that those loopholes should
not be closed because other exploits might arise seems unrealistic. There aren't an infinite number of (reasonably exploitable) loopholes within a single system. If that were the case, there would be no point to close down any exploit ever. But all games from every developer close out exploits. No one just leaves giant loopholes out there for fear that closing loopholes will lead to more loopholes. You couldn't even
have a game in the first place if that were the case.
So weapons are already designed at their basis to demand more power for more outputs. Players install more computers and more DEs to evade that. IMO that's not an "exploit," but it does fly directly in the face of the obvious purpose of power draw scaling with more outputs in the first place.
I'm not trying to be combative, but I really don't see any good reason not to close the long-standing, obvious and easy loop-holes to core balance features of the game if an easy solution presents itself. It's extremely easy to apply a power curve to large numbers of weapon
systems that directly reflects the power curve that exists to curb large numbers of outputs within a single system. Same goes for DEs. Turrets are
weapons they should be treated as such. It would be easy for parent entities to inherit weapon system numbers from their DEs and apply a global value to a collective's total weapon systems, outputs, etc. Particularly because such a substantial number of the worst combat exploits have been entirely founded on the complete lack of any curb against massed DEs as if infinite capacity is somehow fundamentally necessary to basic shipbuilding.
A 300m battleship with 100 mixed turrets should be totally
viable, but every DE on a docking tree should come a cost other than surface area, not be completely free or without tradeoff.
In fact, it may be necessary in the long term to institute a function whereby the engine can recognize the difference between a ship docked to a station, and a turret or ship docked to another ship, because IIRC "but stations!" has been a frequent reason for rejecting DE controls in the past.
