In the end, I don't see how I can consider it secondary armament if the suit is designed around it. Especially if you designed the suit to make the PEWs work better, rather than be cheaper.
It's the primary armament for the suit - indeed the only armament for the suit, once the kinamps are out. But in a mission loadout, it's secondary. You cannot sustain a typical mission on just the strengths of the PEW, unless it's exactly the kind of mission where the PEW would excel - like methodically sniping off enemy battlesuits while they are otherwise occupied. Or drilling exploratory tunnels in bedrock. By the virtue of its terrible refire rate, it cannot be considered a primary armament. Even artillery fires faster.
I just don't think I can justify giving the player everything that's desired.. much better, AND much cheaper, all at the same time.
Not everything. The AS is getting its strength axed for this, which is one of its two primary functions, alongside protection. And you can't take the PEWs out of your loadout, either. Can't drop them, can't give them to someone else. Firing a Final Shot is going to slag your suit's whole arm. There are plenty of emergent downsides that don't need to be explicitly defined.
Make it a little better and a little cheaper? Sounds good. How about 24 or 25 tokens for a version with a single PEW with an improved rate of fire?
Nobody would buy it. The difference in cost is too little to justify losing arm strength, when an Assault Suit can handle a PEW well enough to not matter anyway. The cost-gain curve is exponential for non-DIY items, it's always been this way.
Or how about some other kind of secondary armament that's more in line with the five token desired cost?
There's lots of options for that, but it's not the point. The point is that we, as tinkerers, are trying to
conform to the existing pricing system, where paying double the price can get you eight times the power. You, as the council, are trying to
change the pricing system, inventing something new to conform to your own ideas of how it should be.
Until you actually
change the pricing system, so that ALL items scale linearly or near-linearly in power with increasing cost, current Armory included, we are going to keep pushing for the 'old' pricing principles in our designs.