Stock CA doesn't have any emissive ability. It can be broken down very effectively: try sending a vessel with Meson Blasters (unmounted) against a CA vessel, and remove all supplies from the CA vessel. The Crystalline ship will go down, sooner or later (several ships will be needed to finish it off before combat is over). Or you can just do a Shield Depleter+weapon+Shield Depleter+weapon combination; a weapon dealing 120 damage should be fine for the test (not powerful enough to break 10 CA on its own, strong enough to destroy the vessel along with the Shield Depleters).
There is, to the best of my knowledge, no guide about weapons. SJ made a list of weapons and their damage ratios though, and there should be a program to get those values. They can be interested, if you are lazy like me and do not want to do the maths yourself.
Do not worry if you do not understand everything about the Crystalline Armour, partial damage and the like: it is *complicated*, because partial damage is handled very oddly by the game.