At high tech levels, my experience has been that beam weapons are too large for the damage they can actually deliver at extended range. I've moved to mesons, although I haven't tried particle beams yet. Mesons are just nasty... every hit is robbing the enemy of components, and it doesn't take too many salvos to defeat a target. You can also fit more of them on your ship in the same space that you can fit a laser, and since they only do 1 damage, your only concern with regard to range is can you successfully hit. Better yet, at high tech levels, mesons are FAST. My assault mesons and my PD mesons both fire every 5 seconds, while heavy lasers were up around 30 or 35 seconds, I think. Because the PD fire control is so ridiculously expensive (4x range and 4x speed), I specialize my PD ships and my assault ships.
There are several things wrong here.
But first I do agree that Meson cannons have a good advantage in bypassing armor and shields.
First issue is that all beam weapons have the same hs progression with one exception, Gauss Cannons have fixed sizes. So as long as the same focal size is selected lasers, mesons, particle beams, etc have the same size requirement.
Nor do mesons cycle faster than lasers, they have the same power requirement per focal size. The only way to increase the ROF is to use larger capacitors and have the powerplants to feed them.
Once your beam fire control range base tech is at least 50%/32,000km (4the level) you really don't get much advantage for the range multiplier if your only using final fire settings for PD. At that tech there is only a 12% difference between std range and 4X range and 10k/km (84% vs 96%). And the spread shrinks with each successive tech advance.
Jumpp,
My advice is not to go with the particle beams. The reason being their range does not keep up with fire control ranges at the same tech research expenditure.
Example:
Beam Fire Control 50% Range 32,000 km is 4th level and a total of 14k research points.
Capacitor Recharge Rate 4 is 4th level and a total of 14k research points.
4th level laser is:
-20cm Laser Focal Size total of 14k research points. Does 10pts damage at 10k and require 10 points of power.
-Ultraviolet Laser total of 14k research points.
for a weapon with a max range of 400k/km (limited back to 256k/km by fire control) with ROF of 15 (capacitor 3, 4 does nothing to improve ROF) and does 4 points of damage at max range with a base tohit of 2% at that range.
4th level particle beam is:
-Particle Beam Strength 4 total of 12k research points. (actually 3rd level but functionally the same research expenditure). Does 4pts damage at all ranges and require 10 points of power.
-Particle Beam Range 200k/km total of 14k research points.
for a weapon with a max range of 200k/km (less than fire control max range) with a ROF of 15 (capacitor 3, 4 does nothing to improve ROF) and does 4 points of damage at max range with a base tohit of 22% at that range.
note: the above laser does 6pts of damage at 200k/km with a base tohit of 22%.
For ship killers you're still better off with missles.