Solomani666 said:
Multiple pulses would mean multiple damage rolls on an unarmored ship, so a pulse laser fires 1 pulse.
A beam laser gunner will try to keep the beam in one spot, hoping that it will burn through the hull at some point.
Even though MgT has shortened the combat turn (to 6min iirc) that is still a long time for either a single pulse (what are you doing the other 5min and change?) or to be maintaining a beam on target.
Aside from the issue of not having perfect target location data and having to sweep an area of probability to score a hit, there are other issues.
One is ablation of the target creating it's own screen against your laser at their end. That is if as you describe the idea is to keep the laser focused on a single spot to burn through over 6min implies a fairly low power and slow burn. As it does the hull will off-gas and diffuse the laser, reducing its ability to do damage.
Born more of the CT long combat turn (about 15min) I have long had a different description of laser fire that I think still fits MgT.
Basically the combat turn is spent firing bursts (of seconds of beam duration and then recharge the capacitor) into the target's probably location. A hit indicates one or more of the bursts struck the target. I haven't really defined the number of bursts so I wouldn't be nailed down to a specific, somewhere between 5 and 20 if I had to offer one. With higher TL lasers (per CT HG getting better to hit odds) having quicker recharge time and gaining more bursts making them more likely to hit.
The Beam Laser bursts (of several seconds) are longer in duration but of equal power to the Pulse Laser bursts. A Beam Laser burst will score a hit as a line across the target, spreading the damage. It is more likely to hit in this manner, but must hit a vulnerable area to do damage so it generally does less damage than the Pulse Laser.
The Pulse Laser trades time on target for more of a punch by packing the power into a shorter burst (of a few seconds). It is less likely to hit than the Beam Laser for this reason. When it does hit though all its power is on one spot (or a very short line) and it punches a hole deeper into the target doing significantly more damage.
That's been my take on it for a long time anyway.
