After doing a bit a research, it seems Taldren went with the SFB DAC... unaltered. Which is rather suprising. I would have thought they would, at the very least, changed the first row to "hit twice", to counter having double internals. Apparently it by design that large volleys would do mostly Hull and engine damage and very little of anything else.
I guess it makes some since that a plasma race would want to do engine damage, to slow their opponent, thus making it easier to hit them the next time. It doesn't make a lot of since to do 130 internals to a ship and only take out 2 systems.
An article I read said the people had done a bit of testing and found that a Hydran could hit a Fed CA for 130 pts of internals and only destroy 2 or 3 systems. The article was written sometime after EAW came out but before OP. The author had asked Kothozoth (what ever Magnum mans company's name is) if that was going to be changed in a patch. Magnum responded," No, it was as the designers intended." According to the article doing 8-10 pts was the optimal damage to maximize the Miza effect.
Nemesis, as to why it didn't slow the I-CA down, I can't say. I would have thought that with a 200 pt volley, you would have done lots of Hull and Engine damage as intended, but perhaps you wiped out every other system you can't see, i.e. Labs, transporters, bridge.
Considering how the DAC effects large volleys I am going to have to swing my voted back to plasma races being hurt more by the Double internals. Here is what Plasma races are up against.
1. Acceleration- ships can accelerate away at anytime from Plasma torps thus reducing the damage taken.
2. Double Internals reduce the "crunch" power of a plasma torp compared to other weapons.
3. Large volleys do mostly Hull and engine damage while leaving most weapon systems untouched.
4. Compounding #3, engine damage slowly repairs its self at no cost in power or repair parts, engine damage can also be sped up by using repair parts.
You would think that with the above mentioned handicaps that it would be almost a deal breaker for races that use plasmas and render ships that rely on plasma for their primary heavy weapon totally worthless. Considering the above, Romulan ships should be unplayable. While Gorn have lots of phasers to off set plasmas, Romulans have to rely very heavily on plasmas. I am left wondering if there is something we are not taking into consideration...
I can tell you that I have fought and either won or held my own against some of the best pilots this game has seen while I was flying a Gorn ship. I have flown a Gorn ship against Magnumman-icop, iceman, topdog, Frey, shadowlord, and a few other Klinks, with impossible to remember names. I can't say I beat them all, but I at least held my own.
Something I should add, the article I read said EAW used the SFB DAC, but didn't say how they "knew" that for sure. I can't really see how they could test it since you can't see most of the systems on a ship or even see most of the systems being hit. It could be they just assumed SFC used the same DAC, and it doesn't. Even if SFC doesn't use the SFB DAC it would appear it uses something similar from the way damage is allowed small volley vs large volley.