Well I guess the thing is it makes sense for kinetic weapons to do more damage than energy based ones. Energy weapons be they lasers or plasma or what have you react on impact, and direct much of their energy away from the impact sight, even if plasma explodes on impact it's not going to dig in very deep. A solid kinetic projectile with mass and inertia how ever is going to have much deeper penetration. So directed energy weapons for high impact to properly polarized shields, low impact to unshielded enemies, kinetic weapons low impact to shields, high impact to unshielded enemies. Also it doesn't help that on "match game" you practically have to have one gun of each element.