The biggest advantage lasers have over other systems is their hitscan nature. This means they hit more often and don't care too much about how evasive of a craft they're fighting.

The other advantage is that they're (mostly) non-volatile. The weapon itself has no chance of exploding, unlike APS' or PACs. It also doesn't require highly volatile ammo storage. However, it does require much less volatile power generators.

They easily double as munition defense in the form of LAMS which even works against APS shells.

They're expensive to build, but it isn't too bad. Their material/firepower is a bit higher than what you'd expect from a kinetic APS.

They are fairly expensive to run, though that is largely dependent on engine performance.

You'll often have to insulate them because they're vulnerable to EMP.

Counters against lasers are not nearly as strong as they used to be, but they're still pretty strong. Planar shields and smoke are still viable counters, while water is still a very hard counter that basically invalidates them. As such, they're completely useless against and on submarines.

Not too long ago lasers had essentially simplified kinetic damage. The final Armor Piercing (AP) value of a laser along with the Armor Class (AC) value of whatever they they hit was all that determined the damage. They ignored armor stacking and angles and they followed the damage multiplier formula of min(1, AP/AC). What that formula means is that laser damage was reduced for when laser AP was lower than block AC. Laser AP of 40 would make the laser only do 2/3 of full damage to heavy armor with the AC of 60. Still, this multiplier was capped to 1 so lasers would do no extra damage to soft blocks such as wood. All that applies but AP was replaced with Intensity (I) and AC with Fire Resistance (FR), making the multiplier now be min(1, I/FR).

Laser damage also reduces the block's AC. It uses a multiplier equal to 1-damage/HP.

Additionally, blocks destroyed by lasers now burn. This change warranted for direct laser damage to be cut in half (does not apply to LAMS).


How much they burn is affected by their health (HP) and Flammability (F). Fire uses fuel to deal damage over time, and upon destruction, the block's HP multiplied by flammability is added to that fuel. Wood has a flammability of 80% and stone of 0%, which makes wood five times weaker to fire (of high intensity) than stone. Not all fuel is equal, as destroyed blocks produce fuel with the intensity equal to the fire resistance they had. Since you most likely also have the initial fire, the final intensity is calculated as a weighted average.

Same as lasers, fire also uses Intensity (I) and Fire Resistance (FR) but has a different damage multiplier, capped between 0 and 1, of (I-0.15*FR)/(0.85*FR) or 1.18*I/FR-0.18 in a different format. In short, you get full damage when intensity is equal or greater than fire resistance. The negative offset also means that losing out on intensity makes you lose out even more on damage. For example, when I/FR is 0.5, the multiplier is 0.41. When the ratio is roughly 0.16, the multiplier is 0. This results in a dynamic where intensity is more important than fuel for when the multiplier is less than one, which isn't the case with AP.

Fire deals damage over time, and intensity determines how fast - twice the intensity, twice the rate.

Similar to laser damage, fire also reduces the block's AC.


As well as changing lasers from continuous (technically 40 pulses per second) to pulsed, they introduce multipliers to both the raw damage and intensity. The Raw Damage (RD) of continuous to pulsed is 3/4, while the Intensity (I) ratio is 3/2, resulting in continuous having 12.5% higher RD*I, which determines the displayed firepower. However, more raw damage always results in more actual damage, while that isn't the case with intensity because the damage multiplier is capped to 1. That and the fact a pulse is more likely to destroy a block instead of just damaging multiple makes it more favorable for offense.

The graph below shows effective block health adjusted for price in four scenarios. Dark blue and orange don't have fire accounted for, which would happen in case of submersion. Green and light blue account for fire. Dark blue and green have a pulsed laser, while orange and light blue a continuous one. As can be seen, blocks mostly have more effective health against continuous lasers. You'll also see that accounting for fire makes a massive difference with wood since it's highly flammable. If you know you'll fight heavy armor, then you might want to opt for a continuous laser, since the block's reliance on high fire resistance makes it weak to the higher intensity.



This new component increases how much fuel is added when the affected laser destroys a block at the expense of laser damage. Each 1% of laser damage taken away is converted to 6% of additional fuel added after a block is destroyed, up to a maximum of 25% laser damage lost and 150% additional fuel.

The graph below shows how effective block health changes when a maxed out superheating module is added in case of a pulsed laser. A significant decrease in health can only be seen with wood, while metal and stone, both of which are non-flammable, experience a significant increase.

Outgoing laser damage (converted from energy) is determined by the charge and discharge rate of the laser. Whichever one is weaker determines it, so the goal is to have them as close to equal.

Charge rate is much more expensive in both cost and space to increase than discharge rate. It's also much simpler as all there is to it is the number of pumps attached. Pumps provide 12 laser power (the triple ones 36).


This one is determined by the energy capacity of your lasers, cavity discharge rate as % per shot and the rate of fire of your laser. Energy Capacity (EC) is increased by having more cavities, Cavity Discharge Rate as % per shot (DR%) by using destabilizers and the Rate of Fire (RoF) is changed by using Q switches. The formula for the Discharge Rate (DR) is then DR=RoF*EC*DR%/100.


What's been talked about now is really the maximum charge and drain rate. They may differ, but the real rates won't and will instead find an equilibrium at whichever maximum rate is lower. If the max charge rate is lower than the max discharge rate, then there's less energy in the cavities than the max capacity allows for, and the real discharge rate will decrease to match max charge rate.If it's the other way around, cavity energy will be at full capacity and so the real charge rate will decrease to match the max discharge rate. This latter scenario is ever so slightly more expensive than the former, since charge rate is more expensive to raise than the other, which is why only the former scenario will be accounted for in the table below.


The only way to decrease cost while retaining the same damage is to change how the laser discharges. Since discharge rate is much cheaper to increase than the other, this cost improvement is marginal. It consists simply of achieving a high rate by using cheap destabilizers to increase per shot discharge % instead of using the much more expensive cavities to increase energy capacity.

Below are pictures of a branch with the most common setup and its cross-section. A single slice of the setup contains 8 pumps (96 laser power) and a cavity (125 laser energy). At the end, there's some number of storage cavities (5000 laser energy each) and some number of destabilizers. There's X pump segment slices, Y storage cavities and a % discharge rate per second (DRs%) calculated as RoF*DR% and Q switches don't change it.
The equilibrium equation is 96X=DRs%/100*(125X+5000Y).



These branches get longer the more destabilizers there is, since it takes more pumps to cover a single storage cavity. Destabilizers also have diminishing results; 0,1,2,3 and 4 destabilzers result in DRs% of 10%, 19,2%, 27.2%, 34.4% and 40.8% per second. Below is a table which shows the optimal construction of lasers, as well as cost of repeating components (cavities, storage cavities and pumps, destabilizers) in regards to the number of destabilizers and firepower.


"Seg. Num." refers to the number of pump segments (8 pumps per segment).

Attenuation is the loss of damage through distance, that being either from air or water. Water has an attenuation rate 20 times higher than that of air, making it a hard counter when there's a lot of distance for the laser to go through it.

It's displayed as a % damage lost per 100 meters, which you can see when hovering over lenses. The game will also tell you how much damage you're left with at certain distances. The graph below shows the remaining damage over distance for an offensive laser with 2% attenuation (orange and red) and LAMS which always has an attenuation of 9.56% (blue and purple). The curves for LAMS starts at 200% because it does twice the raw damage of laser combiners. Red and blue are the lasers in air, and orange and purple are the lasers in water. As you can see, laser don't handle water well, and LAMS is almost always entirely useless in it.


It works to reduce laser intensity in hopes of reducing the damage multiplier. You get it by using smoke dispensers, and the more resources they burn, the more smoke is produced. For each material burned per second, a dispenser produces 2500 smoke, maxing out at 25000. The intensity multiplier is 18/(smoke+1500)^0.4.

The graph below shows shows how intensity (red line) decreases with smoke strength and how effective block health increases. It assumes a pulsed laser (intensity of 40) is used. The blue line doesn't apply to wood and reinforced wood as their fire resistance is too low. The green line represents reinforced wood. The fire resistance of wood is so low that an effective health gain cannot be practically achieved.



They also reduce laser intensity in the same way smoke does. It's so similar that its effect against lasers is called effective smoke. When a laser goes through both smoke and a planar shield, the intensity reduction is calculated using a sum of smoke from the dispenser and effective smoke from the shield. Still, a planar needs to burn far more resources for its equivalent smoke than a dispenser, and they need an engine at that. For each 1 effect strength, equivalent smoke is increased by 150, maxing out at 1500.

There's two ways to design LAMS. The first is cheaper, but only suitable for defending against constant firepower. The second is more expensive, but also suitable for defending against volleys.

As mentioned earlier, unlike CIWS, they can shoot at APS rounds. They're short range and nearly completely useless in water. They also deal twice the raw damage of laser combiners (including CIWS).

4Q is arguably the best way to build LAMS as the increased intensity of 0Q is never useful for munitions. Still, the decreased rate of fire of 4Q can lead to lots of wasted overkill damage on small shells.


This way uses destabilizers to cheap out on storage. Energy capacity is used purely to achieve a high enough discharge rate. This is alright when there's constant pressure on the system, but if it's fighting volleys, it will spend the vast majority of the time doing nothing as it will very quickly charge up. When the volley comes, it won't have a lot of energy stored up to convert into damage.


LAMS of high capacity fire in bursts meant to take down volleys. They're meant to fight CRAM cannons and large missiles, which take ~30 seconds to reload. This is why they're built with enough energy capacity to handle ~30 seconds of charging. LAMS has a very short range, and even though relatively slow, CRAM shells don't leave the system with a lot of time to destroy them. Those 30 seconds of charge need to be emptied in about 2 seconds, which can be done with 6 destabilizers (52.17% discharge rate per second).


Both low and high capacity LAMS can be used offensively. Simply plop down a laser combiner and tell it not to fire if there's less than 99% energy or whatever is slightly less than your equilibrium. LAMS nodes are gonna shoot regardless, and while they're shooting, the offensive laser won't.


No longer viable as of the fire update as it deals half the damage LAMS would do. Any advantage it used to have over LAMS is overshadowed by this, or is too conditional to be worth it.

They increase intensity. It is not as valuable as increasing raw damage, and it is so expensive that using them will increase material/firepower. The only benefit of using them is that you don't have to have extra engine power which consumes extra material. They're best used for when you know the enemy has counter measures to reduce laser intensity.

In other words, it's an initial cost investment which saves volume and resources over time.

You can expect roughly 13 blocks per firepower, 750 materials per firepower, and 312.5 power per firepower for a pulsed laser. Having a doubler for each laser slice (8 pumps) will result in a 31% intensity increase. The increase is proportional to the doubler/pump ratio. Using an engine that produces 600 power per material and 80 power per volume and 1 doubler per laser segment, the increase in firepower/volume is roughly 21%, but it came at a roughly 44% initial investment increase. However, it costs 24% less to power than it would a 31% bigger system with no doublers. It takes 44 minutes for the smaller system with doublers to become cheaper than the bigger system without them. However, this isn't really an equivalent comparison as a bigger system would have more raw damage and the doubler system would have more intensity.