Laser / advanced laser engines - do they make a difference?

[Mr-Bandit]

i build a design with ultaviolets and 3 adv laser engines, and the stats do not change.

do they do anything? worthwhile? bugged? anyone?

[jrbushee1]

I don't think the laser engines show up in the stats but they might do additional damage in combat, you could always try a combat in skirmish mode and look at the enemy ships when you deal damage to them that might give you an indication. also I don't use that many lasers in my builds because you need to get really close to deal a lot of damage (and its tough for me to do against alien ships)

[Blaarg]

They absolutely affect the damage done by lasers in combat. It does show up in the tooltip showing the damage output on the target ship when hit in combat. Otherwise, no it does not show up in the tooltips.

[Ericus1]

Absolutely. They greatly increase the effective range of lasers, and IMO are a required part of good beam ship design. Any beam focused ship class should have a TC (necessary to not get your weapons shut down by ECM, especially so because the effect is stronger the further away you are, and beams want to shoot from as far away as possible while still getting through armor), a heat sink (necessary for any weapons that generate heat when fired), and as many of the remaining utility modules as possible be laser engines because their effect stacks.