Lasers (or Mesons, for that matter) doing less/little damage to planets:
Those are precision weapons, good for taking out PDCs, for example, not so good if you want to take out industrial centers (yes, if you use a large enough laser, that will explosively vaporize a good chunk of matter, you get sort of an explosion, but regular explosives are likely to be a lot more efficient).
I don´t have a problem with that. (I like the "range" idea for them, I just don´t think laseres are any good for taking out dispersed targets, like ground troops. Yes, a tank hit by a 200mm UV-Laser beam will be DEAD, but there are a couple hundred in the division, it will take some time to take them all out, provided, you can even target a camoflaged, shut down tank).
I agree that a laser may not be a good weapon for taking out a Factory, it's likely that our Industry isn't really a single factory, but rather a reasonably sized industrial district of a city, so yes, a single shot shouldn't do much damage at all.
What about multiple shots though? If there are two warships in orbit firing four lasers each every 30 seconds for two days, that's over 23,000 laser shots. They should definitely have done significant damage to the planet's industry and population in that amount of time. Missiles are still way better of course, they could have done the same amount of damage in a single five second time increment.
