A 20cm UV laser deals 10 damage at 40k, 4 damage at 100k, 2 damage at 200k and 1 damage at 250k and above. The Particle beam does 4 damage from 10k - 200k range
Not sure where you drew those data points from but they are mostly incorrect.
Yes the 20cm UV lasers does 10pts at 40k/km. But the rest of the damage/range figures are: 9pts 50-80k/km, 8pts 90-120k/km, 7pts 130-160k/km, 6pts 170-200k/km, etc. Damage doesn't drop to 1pt until 370k/km.
Thanks for providing extra detail. I wasn't as clear as I could have been.
Since mesons only do one damage over their range, and that damage doesn't reduce with range, you don't need a large focal length. You can restrict the weapon range to 1.44Mkm, since that's the best our beam fire control can do. This gives you a smaller focal size, and therefore faster cycling and smaller size. With a laser, however, restricting it's range to 1.44Mkm brings it's damage down to 0 at that range. To maintain decent power at range, I use a larger focal size, giving slower cycling and larger size. My quad meson turrets are usually around 29HS with a 5 second cycle, while my quad laser turret comes in at something like 130HS with a 30 or 35 second cycle. I'm not positive on the numbers since I don't have a save with these techs available, but the relative sizes support my point.
In any given fleet, I'll have 3-5 point defense meson ships with a 1.44Mkm range set to area defence (each ship has around 15-25 PD meson cannons in various turret configurations). With the 5 second cycling, and again at high tech levels, I have yet to see anything get within ~800k of my fleets. Further experience may change this, but this mix has served me well so far.
First a significant stipulation, the original poster appears to be inquiring about early tech beams not high tech systems.
That being said, to achieve a usable beam range of 1.4m/km you have to use a max tech BFC.
The smallest laser with that range is a 30cm/Soft X-Ray which actually still does 1pt and is 9hs.
The smallest meson with that range is a 30cm/focusing tech 12(max tech) tech is also 9hs.
Both are the same size and have the same power requirement of 24 and need a max tech capacitor 25 to achieve a ROF of 5.
The smallest quad turret for either is 48.96hs.
Needless to say, if your playing with max tech against AI NPR's built based on a lower player tech assumption (example: start player population of 1.2 billion nets around 300k starting research points) then you should be functionally invulnerable. But that's not really a good basis replying to Academy questions. At the vary list stipulate that your reply is based on a max tech environment.