The ‘firing at an angle’ thing does bother me too, looks a bit bad.
Yeah. As said, I’m not a big fan of that either. It just feels so unrealistic when those beams go to that certain spot ON DIFFERENT TIMES and then some miraculous way stop there waiting for the rest and THEN TURN to form a forward beam WHICH WAVES from left to right even the beams forming it are solid…
At least the beams coming from sides should come simultaneously so it would seem like they are canceling each other out so they stop at that certain spot and when the third middle beam comes to that it thrust the beams forward. But even that feels quite unrealistic without some sort of prism or other thing in front of the ship.
Also the formed beam really should be bigger than the beams forming it, it’s a combination of three smaller beams…
So in the end… It could be made to look nice and something which could work but it really needs some work.
No sense? They’re firing 3 of the most powerful beams available into an artificial gravity lense in front of the ship. The first, then second, beam resonates in our artificial gain medium and as the third beam is added our artificial resonant chamber is adjusted to release the collimated energy at the enemy ship.
Just cause we can’t do it in 2009 doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be in a sci-fi game. =)
Personally I would like the graphic to have the focal point glow brighter as each beam is added and then release a stronger beam at the target.
If the ship used some sort of gravity well to stop and then turn the laser fire there should be some sort of visual effect for it. Like the center point where the lasers gather to could get dragged inwards, or how you would say it… so that it would look like a gravity well is actually gathering the laser beams to one bigger one.
That connection point really needs some sort of visual effect there. 
(Also the combination beam should be bigger, still. ;P)
I’d rather see spinal mounts that the 3 beams combining.
Actually, something that would really improve the look of beams (for me) would be the impact deflection direction of beams on shields. I think it would look better if it deflected at the opposite angle to the impact normal… like http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Reflection_angles.svg but obviously for a curved surface.
or you could do the Starship equivilent of the ‘link gun’ out of unreal tournament.
Ships could have the option to fire at a ship that has hull capacitors linked to a merged focus ring/crystal/CERN type tube this ship then lets loose a beam thats is very gratuitous/OTT
1 module per ‘reinforced/received’ beam upto a max of 4
modules should be v.heavy and expensive requiring a lot of crew to supervise incase of overheating. Recharge cooldown per module could be upgradable, you could even cap the amount of received beams to enable a quicker fire rate as the cooldown would be quicker (or maybe a cooldown systems module could be an upgrade)
The ships firing the beams could fire them as normal whilst the cooldown on the link ship is in effect.
Of course, any fighters caught in said beam get fried straight away and have about as much impact on the beams course as a gnat caught in a afterburner.
The beams themselves and the ‘link’ module and capacitors cannot be put on the same ship, or if they they could it would be just x2 beams linking on a v.slow, heavy cruiser.
there…
what do you think ?
I kind of like the Death Star Hammertong laser effect, but it seems to me that the problem here is: What if I put the weapon in question into a hardpoint that only produces one turret on the hull? There are a few of those on cruisers. Not that you can’t switch things around, but still, it’s an issue.
I also agree with the various posters who have argued that it looks very odd going off at an angle. Which then pretty much requires a multi-turret hardpoint at the front of the hull (because if you think it looks odd headed at an angle from the front, think about having it firing from 3/4 back off on the port side.
Simple solution to the weird look… Make the focal point of multi-turret lasers be one of the turrets themselves… Say a point just in front of the turret. With a little circular power glow emanating from that point it would look pretty cool, and be more believable because the lasers are converging at a point on the hull, presumably being controlled by some unseen device in the turret. Then just use the second turret in the group, or make a way to flag which turret is the central turret, and you get a pretty nifty effect.
I’m interested in new types of laser weapons maybe it can help give us a alternative to the cruiser laser, for battering down shields.