Real Laser Beams V0.0.2

Makes non-ship laser weapons actually shoot continuous beams, not some slow energy projectiles, and removes the recoil.

It bothered me that the laser weapons in Starfield are shooting relatively slow moving energy projectiles, instead of the real beams.
Also, lasers should not have recoil.

In the vanilla, the lasers don’t feel any different from other weapon types. They are just guns with energy flavour.
Making lasers shoot continuous beams and tweaking the balance around that allows for the lasers to feel more unique.
(Inspired by how lasers behave in Mechwarrior Online / Mechwarrior 5)

So, as soon as the Creation Kit was released, I created a simple mod for myself that addresses this issue.

Fair warning: It is a relatively low effort mod that does not change character animations and sounds, so they end up a litte janky due to fire rate being vastly increased to emulate continuous beams.

What is changed:

All vanilla laser veapons now shoot a beam (like the Cutter) instead of a projectile.

Also, lasers now have no recoil (there is still “recoil” animation and some screen shake, but it does not affect accuracy).
To compensate for lack of recoil, the shot now has a duration. For full damage, you need to track the target (again, like the Cutter):

Lasers with Semi Auto receivers, have limited beam duration that is the same as vanilla attack delay.
For example, Solstice has attack delay 0.4, so it will shoot the beam for 0.4 seconds and then will have 0.4 seconds cooldown (0.8 seconds for full cycle)

Lasers with Full Auto receivers do not have beam duration limit – they shoot until you stop, or the ammo clip is depleted (like the Cutter)

The beam duration is acheived by actually shooting a 10-round burst.
So, all clip sizes, levelled lists, costs, crafting recipes and mass were adjusted accordingly.
Also, the on-weapon ammo counters now show the number of remaining bursts.

The damage values were adjusted accordingly:

For Semi Auto receivers, the base DPS is the same as in vanila.
Full 10-round burst deals same damage as two vanilla shots (since the firing cycle is twice as long, that gives the same DPS)|ut that means that the ammo efficiency got higher – damage per 10 units of ammo is two times higher than per one vanilla ammo unit.
For Full Auto receivers, the DPS is slightly higher than the Semi Auto DPS.
That is because now, to get full DPS, you need to track the target the whole time.

TLDR:
The Semi Auto deals more concentrated bursts of damage, but the average damage is slightly lower.
The Full Auto shoots a coninous, but less concentrated beam.

(Only the base damage was recalculated, so when adjusted for damage buffs and reductions the ballance might change)

Credits:

MrMindstalker