There are beam weapons in the game but none we can use.

Seaker Beamer

-Manufacturable Ship
-Uses current seeker model
-Fires a built-in non-autoaim straight laser beam that deals 1000 damage instantly
-Range is 4000m and it fires through and causes damage to ANYTHING in that path.
-must be pintpoint/direct hit to cause damage
-ship may be mounted as a turret on a capital ship and gets a boost in stats
-purpose would be for non-Deneb, non-Hive skirmish use (OK for queening)

Standalone Ship
Damage: 1000
Addon Ports: none
Energy to fire: 100
Targetting:
Firing Delay: 8 seconds
Mass: 2000kg
Cargo: none
Armor: 100
Speed: 45m/s
Thrust: 190N
Turbo Thrust: 200N
Spin Torque: 7.2Nm
Turbo Speed: 220m/s
Turbo Energ: 50/s
Cu as cargo: 100

Turret Addon
Damage: 12,000
Energy Drain: 5000
Delay: 8 seconds
Targeting: none
Energy: 1000/blast
Cu as cargo: 100
Grid: 40

Prerequisites:

-Turrets must be destructible
-Use in Deneb War as a turret constitutes a war crime and if brought into a deneb skirmish sector it results in a special unaligned task force that jumps in and destroys your capital ship with overwhelming force.
-if present in hive skirmishes it causes all hive bots to attack your ship en masse

I'd suggest increasing the volume as cargo to 150 cu. If it has a 100 cu volume as cargo, it can be used in overstuffing to stuff six XCs in a goli and 8 in a dent, and I'm not sure that it's really a good idea.

Also, what beam weapons are there in game that we can't use?

capships dont have 5000 energy

I think he means they drain 5000 energy from the ship they hit, not the ship they're fired from.

Sounds cool +1

Whoops, thanks Anewold. We could either adjust to 4000 energy, or require an upgraded capship powercell (manufacturable of course), that provides 5000. I sadly cannot update the OP.

Orientations are still quantized, just less than they used to be. Without auto-aim, you'll have some trouble direct-hitting something at 2000m, let alone 4000m.

The main reason why we haven't released beam weapons, is that they run a bit counter to the "twitch" model game in which skill is supposed to be a major determining factor. Once you get into beam weapons, they're insta-hit. Even without auto-aim, the defender cannot do anything to avoid them.

In this case, the defender can't even hide behind objects, all the way out to 4km. It seems a bit potentially frustrating and overpowered. What's the goal here, exactly?

+1 incarnate... no beam weapons. +1 to kennyb's master of twitch combat.

This suggestion is one implementation of something I've thought about for awhile: which is basically a pilotable tiny ship that can also be mounted as a turret in capital ships.

The idea being these ships would be highly specialized, highly vulnerable, operable outside of a capital ship turret but much more powerful when used as a capital ship turret.

The turret fighter idea is interesting. Not so sure about the beam weapons for the reasons Incarnate mentioned.