My personal theory is that in STO they indeed only use plasma because every 'faction' was to have a native weapon type. In canon, I always assumed disruptors were just the most common weapon available on the intergalactic market. A lot of the one-off and minor aliens also used disruptor weaponry.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
of course, the out-of-universe explanation is that the various writers were either unwilling, for whatever reason, or just too lazy to come up with unique energy types - or torpedo types or FTL types, since almost every alien race in existence uses photon torpedoes and warp drive
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
of course, the out-of-universe explanation is that the various writers were either unwilling, for whatever reason, or just too lazy to come up with unique energy types - or torpedo types or FTL types, since almost every alien race in existence uses photon torpedoes and warp drive
Why invent something new when something already works? Not everyone is like Starfleet and has to invent new designs every few years.
Klingons have used the D7/Ktinga and Bird of Prey for centuries because they work, plus it's not like they haven't invented other types...
If I remember correctly Starfleet developed Phasers because they didn't want something as deadly or destructive as Disruptors. Disruptors were more of a shoot to kill weapon while Phasers could be used to disable.
Actually, a lot of writers did make up their own weaponry, then the slush readers flagged it so the in-house writers could run it past the higher-ups and often it was changed to one of the standard weapons unless there was a particular reason to use the unusual ones.
It helps suspension of disbelief to have a small pool of reasonably familiar weapon types instead of every single encounter using something completely different, after a while of that kind of proliferation inevitably gets to the point of someone using guns that shoot out space dragon nose-hairs or something equally nonsensical.
Also, continuity wise you could logically use almost anything on the ground, but ship weapons had to phase in some way to fire out of the shields (an idea that was fanon since the 1970s and later canonized by TNG and the latter part of ENT), otherwise they would have to at least drop the bubble layer or they would just be shooting the backside of their own shields. And yes, disrupters do phase, they mention it numerous times in TNG, the most well-know of those being when the Duras sisters used that fact with the visor tap trick to match phase frequency to shoot the Enterprise-D right through its shields in Generations.
Since the energy type boosting tactical consoles are strictly a STO thing ships in the shows were not limited to a single energy type either. For instance, TAS established that the Klingon D7 had disruptor cannons on the "wings" but the roughly coffin-shaped bumpouts on the underside of the balcony-like structure on the command pod contained beam phasers. That implies that the Romulans gained access to both disruptor and phaser tech in that trade, which could explain why they sometimes fired phasers at ENT-D and sometimes disruptors.
Considering the Romulan flotilla in "The Enterprise Incident" made the rather noobish error of not setting their shields to block transporters but did have transporters (on the D7 command ship at least anyway) I think it is safe to assume that they got those from the Klingons too, which means they would have had the "flame" style transporters instead of the Federation's "Peter Pan sparkle" style. Also, Linville's crew is shown with the Klingon buccaneer style disruptor pistols instead of whatever they used before the trade (in light of ENT it was probably plasma pistols).
One Klingon prop they did not use though was the communicators (which in TOS looked a bit like a bronzed bar of soap), and you could say that Joanne Linville first came up with the wrist communicator since they never gave her a communicator prop so she improvised. The script was probably written assuming she would use the MARS terminal on her desk or wall communicators for everything, but part of the redressing of the set was the removal of the all-too recognizable wall units and some of the lines were done best with her moving so she just talked into her sleeve like she was an undercover cop with a wire instead.
Since they did call the Vulcan beam weapons "particle beams" in ENT there is a good possibility that they were nadion particle weapons configured as disruptors instead of early phasers. I don't remember if the phase cannons were already mounted on NX-01 by then or not, if not they could have even been early phasers without the UESPA crew recognizing them as such, but the way they portrayed the Vulcans in that show the simple reliability of disruptors seems like it would have been the most logical choice to them.
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A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Why invent something new when something already works? Not everyone is like Starfleet and has to invent new designs every few years.
Klingons have used the D7/Ktinga and Bird of Prey for centuries because they work, plus it's not like they haven't invented other types...
If I remember correctly Starfleet developed Phasers because they didn't want something as deadly or destructive as Disruptors. Disruptors were more of a shoot to kill weapon while Phasers could be used to disable.
It helps suspension of disbelief to have a small pool of reasonably familiar weapon types instead of every single encounter using something completely different, after a while of that kind of proliferation inevitably gets to the point of someone using guns that shoot out space dragon nose-hairs or something equally nonsensical.
Also, continuity wise you could logically use almost anything on the ground, but ship weapons had to phase in some way to fire out of the shields (an idea that was fanon since the 1970s and later canonized by TNG and the latter part of ENT), otherwise they would have to at least drop the bubble layer or they would just be shooting the backside of their own shields. And yes, disrupters do phase, they mention it numerous times in TNG, the most well-know of those being when the Duras sisters used that fact with the visor tap trick to match phase frequency to shoot the Enterprise-D right through its shields in Generations.
Since the energy type boosting tactical consoles are strictly a STO thing ships in the shows were not limited to a single energy type either. For instance, TAS established that the Klingon D7 had disruptor cannons on the "wings" but the roughly coffin-shaped bumpouts on the underside of the balcony-like structure on the command pod contained beam phasers. That implies that the Romulans gained access to both disruptor and phaser tech in that trade, which could explain why they sometimes fired phasers at ENT-D and sometimes disruptors.
Considering the Romulan flotilla in "The Enterprise Incident" made the rather noobish error of not setting their shields to block transporters but did have transporters (on the D7 command ship at least anyway) I think it is safe to assume that they got those from the Klingons too, which means they would have had the "flame" style transporters instead of the Federation's "Peter Pan sparkle" style. Also, Linville's crew is shown with the Klingon buccaneer style disruptor pistols instead of whatever they used before the trade (in light of ENT it was probably plasma pistols).
One Klingon prop they did not use though was the communicators (which in TOS looked a bit like a bronzed bar of soap), and you could say that Joanne Linville first came up with the wrist communicator since they never gave her a communicator prop so she improvised. The script was probably written assuming she would use the MARS terminal on her desk or wall communicators for everything, but part of the redressing of the set was the removal of the all-too recognizable wall units and some of the lines were done best with her moving so she just talked into her sleeve like she was an undercover cop with a wire instead.
Since they did call the Vulcan beam weapons "particle beams" in ENT there is a good possibility that they were nadion particle weapons configured as disruptors instead of early phasers. I don't remember if the phase cannons were already mounted on NX-01 by then or not, if not they could have even been early phasers without the UESPA crew recognizing them as such, but the way they portrayed the Vulcans in that show the simple reliability of disruptors seems like it would have been the most logical choice to them.