IIRC they were given limitations on how many hits they could produce per tick, but area fragments are not documented on the wiki or the forum and the bug track no longer exists.I've reworked how shockwave-type weapons cause damage. See: http://wiki.neurohack.com/transcendence/trac/ticket/473 for details.
Without the missing documentation non-default area fragments can't be written and with the actual values used by default unknown they cannot be balanced.