If there were a good reason a long time ago to restrict certain weapon types to certain ship types, then that reason probably doesn't really hold today anymore. When the restriction was created, we only had like three ship types: science vessels, cruisers and escorts. Maybe carriers too.
Nowadays we have raiders, dreadnoughts, science dreadnoughts, heavy dreadnoughts, dreadnought cruisers, warbirds in many variations, science spearheads, pilot escorts, battleships, battlecruisers, scout vessels and so on.
There's much less distinction between the ship classes nowadays - because there are so many more different types, boundaries have certainly become more vague. Between escorts one the one hand and cruisers on the other hand, there's so many other ship types now that are more like cruisers than escorts. Which are nevertheless allowed to use dual cannons.
So why not remove this last remaining distinction altogether? Now that it is far less useful than it may at one point have been anyway?
This may be a ViacomCBS/Paramount thing. They want to maintain a certain Star Trek flavor. Part of that is certain ships and types of ships are known for Cannons, such as the Defiant and Klingon BOP's. And other ship types are expected to be classic beam phasers or similar. I'm just speculating, but they have been known to occasionally and often seemingly randomly get pissy about things like that.
To be honest, I doubt that's the reason.
Cruisers can use single cannons and turrets. Which, visually, aren't that different from dual cannons. And we even have beam weapons nowadays that look more like cannons than beams when fired.
You may be right, but if that is the reason, it doesn't seem like the rule is fully followed or enforced.
I'd be fine with removing the DHC restriction, though you're going to need a bunch of turn buffs to make them work on many of the cruisers.
True, but that's something I put on my cruisers anyway.
Besides, you can also keep more distance between yourself and the enemy. That's what I usually do (besides using turn boosters) when I want to use DHC's on my Universe class. In missions like ISA with stationary targets or Defense of SB1 with predictable spawning points, it's not that difficult to keep them in your front arc that way.
Cruisers and other large ships that can mount DHCs are usually skiddier than other ships of that size-classification which is one of the factors that make them suitable for those heavy cannons. It makes sense since that effectively widens the ark so the skid can be used to keep ships in arc even when not directly approaching them.
For instance, I just transferred a skiddy DBB based build from a Vor'ral to the Eisenberg and the Eisenberg does not skid at all even with max impulse expertise in the skill line, two XV RCS consoles and other consoles that give +turn along with their primary functions. It changes direction a little faster than the Vor'ral did, but the nose does not turn as fast so it is actually slightly harder to keep targets in the DBB arc than it was the even narrower DHC arc on my cannon-armed Vor'rals.
Not everything needs cannons, though it is more convenient if a ship can take them (especially when running sets that have DHCs but no DBBs). The Eisenberg handles like a good array-based knife-fight range ship (I have not had a chance to test that out with an actual array build yet though), which is something its console supports too.
if you think about back in the day, dual cannons would have been very bad choices for cruiser weapons, since you rarely if ever saw a cruiser with more than one Lt tac seat
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To be honest, I doubt that's the reason.
Cruisers can use single cannons and turrets. Which, visually, aren't that different from dual cannons. And we even have beam weapons nowadays that look more like cannons than beams when fired.
You may be right, but if that is the reason, it doesn't seem like the rule is fully followed or enforced.
True, but that's something I put on my cruisers anyway.
Besides, you can also keep more distance between yourself and the enemy. That's what I usually do (besides using turn boosters) when I want to use DHC's on my Universe class. In missions like ISA with stationary targets or Defense of SB1 with predictable spawning points, it's not that difficult to keep them in your front arc that way.
For instance, I just transferred a skiddy DBB based build from a Vor'ral to the Eisenberg and the Eisenberg does not skid at all even with max impulse expertise in the skill line, two XV RCS consoles and other consoles that give +turn along with their primary functions. It changes direction a little faster than the Vor'ral did, but the nose does not turn as fast so it is actually slightly harder to keep targets in the DBB arc than it was the even narrower DHC arc on my cannon-armed Vor'rals.
Not everything needs cannons, though it is more convenient if a ship can take them (especially when running sets that have DHCs but no DBBs). The Eisenberg handles like a good array-based knife-fight range ship (I have not had a chance to test that out with an actual array build yet though), which is something its console supports too.