I found this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QARqSkuQ6XE
With red laser. I thought more beautiful than the current one. Which do you prefer.
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I personally think each faction should have its own colour, It’d make for easier identification when one joins in a firefight!
I do love the red though.
White and green would also suit very nicely 
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I like that idea.
Prefer the white, Wouldn’t be adverse to it depending on weapon type/power. Let players know what they want to avoid most in the middle of a firestorm.
I find the red really difficult to see clearly on the dark background. It’s kind of uncomfortable to watch.
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I find the White really difficult to see clearly on the Sun light.
Freespace 2 had lasers changing colour with distance : when just fired, they are red, and as they travel and cool down, they turn blue before disappearing.
Of course, one of the most noticeable things graphic enhancement mods change is to invert that. Lasers start blue and cool down to red before disappearing.
With an initial bluish white laser, this could be pretty nice in I:B, particularly if there is decreasing damage with distance.
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I’d like colour to depend on equipment, different plasma cannons have different colours (those are plasma cannons, not lasers).
I hope that change the sound of shooting.
I actually was not under the impression that those weapons were lasers. The firing and impact sounds, visuals, etc. kinda suggested a kinetic weapon to me. Aren’t the projectiles significantly more impacted by gravity than lasers would be as well?
I might like to see such stark colors featured with appropriate weapons (like lasers) though!
They aren’t lasers. They’re an energy weapon we call “blasters” and they are just a quick and dirty implementation of them. Once we get the prototype out and begin iterating on our weapons there’s going to be a fair amount of variance in what they look like and how they can be used.
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Thanks for the reply Keith
Thank goodness
yeah…can we like …you know…not call this things lasers please ?
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You know the things they are going to call lasers are going to be just as horribly inaccurate too, right? Great big colourful glowing line across the sky, just you wait. 
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That is, if they do call something lasers.
Sorry for that, it’s an old habit to call those obviously-not-laser … thingies “laser” in soft-SF (guilty as charged).
I even remember a space game (I think it was Vega Strike) where the laser’s description explicitly says they are not being lasers at all but everyone call them that anyway.
Some call them “lazors” to both use the familiar term and differentiate them from real lasers. But that’s a tongue-in-cheek term, like mcguffinite, handwavium or unobtainium. And no-one would be stupid enough to call something “unobtainium” in a serious context, right?
“Blaster” is a popular replacement name, which comes without the RL connotations, so good choice here.
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at least with that we can pretend the cockpit is simulating them for the pilot’s convenience. there is no valid scifi excuses for projectile lasers, though.
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Coloured lasers by faction is like calling whoohoo I’m here!
not very realistic.
unless mankind has gone back to Napoleon style battles.
The Idea of different color’s for different ranges or damage types is a good one I think as it does give some type of visual information to the player. not sure if the ships are going to have some sort of active shields or what kind of damage mitigation will exist but that could help you decide if you had a choice.
The other way that is a good thought is the different color’s for different teams or factions, but that would probably involve being able to change them in-game and not based on ship type.
I do like that idea as well, and I think with enough scifi-ish explanations, you could explain the different colored lasers for each faction, such as each faction has developed specialized laser technology independently that is optimized for a specific wavelength of light… idk, just a thought.
I skipped over this mention the first time around, but I think it’s a very good idea. Say that blaster rounds just tend to spontaneously fade out over time, with the color reflecting the energy level of the round. In vacuum the rounds fade more slowly. In atmosphere, they fade more quickly. The smaller caliber a weapon, the less energy in the blaster rounds, so the range is reduced. That extends right down to hand guns, where the range is never more than a hundred meters or so.
For fun, throw in the fact that a blaster round produces an explosion when it hits something. Well, if you’re shooting through an atmosphere, the round is hitting something all the way to the target. Sometimes, that should just spontaneously trigger the round, causing it to explode. The thicker or dustier the atmosphere, the more often that happens. At some point, the atmosphere is so thick and dusty that firing your weapons is simply a good way to have the rounds explode as they’re released, damaging your guns or your ship. Before that point, you have to ponder whether firing your weapons is ever going to kill your target.
To throw in more mayhem, have the rounds fade at random rates, following a bell curve distribution. Most rounds are pretty well-formed and travel the usual distance before fading out completely. But some rounds will go almost twice as far before fading out. Others will go only half as far. It should produce some nice visuals and a bit of unpredictability in engagements.
If this stuff was in place, then ships might stick with kinetic weapons in atmospheres and energy weapons in vacuum.
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