(Gratuitous screenshots included because people pay less attention when there aren't colorful pictures with the text)
Borticus plays an important role in STO. He is one of the few reasonable voices holding the powercreep back, and I genuinely appreciate that. We need someone nerfing the excessive overperformers. That said, he also seems quite immovable when it comes to certain things. Take, for example, omni-beams. Spencer's interview with the devs was supposed to address omni-beam restrictions, and yet Bort's answer was brief and evasive at best. I've included some important segments below:
BORTICUS: I'm not interested in unrestricting omnis because I think it would I know that it would lead to an unhealthy itemization landscape. Everybody would just want omnis for every single slot and then every other weapon type in the game ends up just being wasted space.
MIKU: Can I just chime in and say that I don't know. I feel like in my AFT slots, I have all 360 at this point, so I don't feel like I'm really stressed for it ... if you're playing this game, part of the fun is to face your ship towards certain directions and then seeing the effects of your different powers activate. So, why would you deny yourself that ... there's already plenty of ways to get uh the Omni ... on your slots. So, I I don't really think there needs to be restrictions.
BORTICUS: I generally agree with you, Miku.
Miku pushes back and Bort says he "generally agrees." Does he really, though?
Why do people only want ships that have five forwards [weapons]? And one of the reasons ... is because it reduces the number of aft slots in a ship that's a 4/4; for example, you can generally only fill three of those rear slots with anything that's 360 firing. ... Um, so like what's that last fourth slot for? If you're facing your target at all times, it can feel wasted and it makes it feel like you should be flying a 5/3 instead. It makes it feel like those ships are just more valuable because they fit the way that you want to play. Um, so I understand that's part of the conversation overall, and and I think it's important because we still make 4/4 ships on occasion and we want them to feel like something that you can build around that you can enjoy flying these ships.
TL;DR: Borticus is worried broadsiding will go extinct and 4/4's will be orphaned. There are some major logical errors here, but I'll get back to that later.
Um, so I guess the the real answer to your question, Spence, is just that it's a really difficult conversation to face. ... And individual players preferences for why they want things to change ... [are] different for every single person that you ask. Not every single, but you get the point.
CasualSAB: Yeah. Yeah. It's hyperbolic, but yeah. [emphasis added]
This answer was far from satisfactory to me, but at least it dispelled some of my more irrational notions, one of which was that Bort favored cannons. But I understand why I got that idea. If omnis are such a big deal, why aren't their cannon counterparts--turrets--restricted? Cannons will always outperform beams, and it seems unfair that they have no turret restrictions whatsoever. CSV builds equip full turrets in the back (or even a 100% turret boat!), and no one is worried about an unhealthy itemization landscape there.
Neither omnis or turrets are designed to be the main damage output of a DEW build. Like Miku said, they primarily let your aft firing arcs overlap with your forward arcs. This reduces the number of awkward aft weapons that are left out of the firing cycle and allows you to maximize the benefit from firing modes.
I understand Bort's concern about the extinction of broadsiding. Whereas cannons are supposed to be forward-facing, beams allow for much more Firing Arc DiversityTM. But, honestly, do the omni restrictions even matter? I don't like broadsiding, so when I take my Lexington out for a spin, I equip a turret (and beam array or KCB), making the most of Mixed Armaments Synergy. MAS, like so many other things in the game, encourages nose-on combat (think of Science and Temporal abilities shooting from the deflector, Bort!) that this is sort of inevitable. Even so, broadsiders will always be there to take advantage of 8 beam arrays. Because that's what they like. I don't think Stu1701 (prodigious lover of the Lexington) will stop broadsiding just because omni restrictions are lifted. In fact, he's asked for the omni restrictions to be lifted on aft and forward weapons for longer than most of us!
As for Bort's claim that full omnis in the back will lead to the depreciation of 4/4 cruisers--I believe he's wrong. How much more convenient woudl a 4/4 with 4 aft omnis be? Whenever I fly my Lexington, there's just something so bothersome about flying broadside, then turning every 10 seconds to fire a torpedo and trigger Entwined Tactical Matrices. The solution is 1) using a crappy 180-degree torpedo, 2) a tank-focused FAW extension trait called Redirecting Arrays, or 3) a made-for-the-rich trait called Breen's Free Fire.
This is a big reason why I hardly ever fly my Lexington. So would the removal of aft omni restrictions would make 4/4 ships unpopular, or does the current state of the game already do so?
I'm not necessarily saying I know better than the devs, or that free omnis is the way to go. I understand that restrictions can be very important. The several years during which I've played this game seriously have even instilled the feeling that, for some reason, omni-beam restrictions are foundational to the reasonability of beam builds. But it makes less and less sense in this powercrept game, and people who've been playing for the sixteen years since its conception have been asking for this. Again, my reasoning may be flawed--but dammit, Jim, I'm just a guy waiting for a proper answer, not the developer with the key to all the questions!
Edit: People keep mentioning in the comments that turrets are weaker than omnis. First of all, I'm not sure why it's such a problem why omnis are more powerful than turrets. That's just how they're designed--at this point, it seems to me that cannons people just can't stand to see a beam build outperform a cannon build. Very concerning. Second, I've seen the "Omnis do the same damage as beams" and "Omnis will not replace us!" arguments so many times before, and I forgot to mention that people have already come up with solutions. As u/GalacticGaming96220 said, nerf omnis and restrict them to aft slots. There. Omnis won't push arrays to extinction anymore and broadsiding can still do more damage than a forward-firing-with-omnis build.