locarno24 said:
The triple pulse turret, I agree, should have some benefit if you can concentrate all the guns in a sustained burst. Not a direct addition, obviously - 6d6 would be a bit harsh from a low TL turret - but it would help make the pulse laser something other than "the thing you fling out the airlock the moment particle beams turn up".
What I do is allow a turret with multiple identical beam weapons to fire in one of two modes:
Linked: fires 1 or more identical weapons on a single roll - each additional weapon adds 1d6 damage
Multiple: fires each weapon with a separate attack roll - weapons do individual damage.
(Once I playtest this some more, I may give a -DM for linked fire to encourage the use of FiCon programs to assist linked mode)
In linked mode, triple pulse lasers can theoretically do 4d6 (at short ranges) and triple beams 3d6.
(The rationale for the +1d for linked is that with beams, you will be able to focus them more easily, so they each get their full damage. Pulse lasers get half damage for additional weapons due to the difficulties aiming and timing the pulses.)
Each such attack is reduced separately by armor, but then the sum of all remaining points is used for the final "hits" table lookup. A double beam is still not going to punch Armor-12 without some fancy shooting, but a triple beam fire-linked might do it, and a couple such shots could really add up to some damage.
Cost-wise, a triple beam turret is 4MCr, a particle beam turret is 4.2MCr and a triple pulse turret is 2.5MCr.
The 3-beam v. particle balance is about right - they are both 3d damage weapons, with 3-beams being more flexible and useful for point defense and "dialing down" the damage, and particle beams adding radiation damage and range.
The 3-pulse comes out to be relatively inexpensive, but they are not very useful at longer ranges, so won't get much play against higher speed enemies armies with beam/particle weapons.