Sins currently has three types of firing arcs with varying amounts of "tolerance":

1) Weapon systems (front, back, left, right) with 180 degree arcs
2) Abilities with the "needsToFaceTarget" flag set -- like the Kol's Gauss Blast -- with 0 degree arcs
3) Abilities without the "needsToFaceTarget" flag set -- like the Kol's Gauss Blast -- with full 360 degree coverage

We really need more flexibility in setting weapon arcs for both weapons and abilities.

Visually, we've all seen how the Kol's beams can emerge at practically a 90 degree angle to the barrels of the guns. This reduces their feeling of power, because they no longer seem like massive, spinal-mounted cannon (like Homeworld's Ion Cannon), but merely "turrets on poles."

This also has critical gameplay impacts. The combination of weapon arc size and turn rate dramatically affects how vulnerable a ship is to getting swarmed. Imagine if the Ion Cannon Frigates from Homeworld or the Vaygr battlecruiser from Homeworld 2 had Sins-style 180 arcs for their forward weapons. It would completely remove those ships' sole weakness: vulnerability against small mobile strike craft.

If Sins capital ships had smaller firing arcs, their actual damage output could be boosted so that they actually feel significantly more powerful than other ships. With the current arcs, increasing their power is infeasible, since it would make them too effective against frigates, as in the Homeworld examples above.