Question on beam weapons

[plasticpanzers (OP)]

This may be an easy one but If I put beam weapons (lasers) turreted on a PDC on a planet/moon/asteroid that has
NO atmosphere do they work as intended or do only Meson beams work on planets vs ships.  Thanks!

[Father Tim]

It has nothing to do with the unit the beams are mounted on; only whether or not they are firing into or out of atmosphere.

[plasticpanzers (OP)]

I think I just said that my beam weapons were in turrets, not that it matters for my inquiry.  My inquiry was that
do lasers work from planet surface to ship in space or does ANY atmosphere block them (and not Meson) from
firing.   A certain % of atmosphere or none only.   There is a grey area there with moons having virtually no atmosphere
(like Mercury) or none (like the Moon).  This is for PDC or surface beam weapons other than Meson.

[TheBawkHawk]

At 0 atmospheres of gas, 100% of the damage goes through. At 1 atmosphere of gas, 0% of damage gets through. Its a linear relationship afaik, so at 0.5 atm of gas you would be dealing half damage.

[JacenHan]

As a note, the final damage gets rounded down, so weapons that deal 1 damage (for example, gauss cannon) will not work with any level of atmosphere.

[Jovus]

One caveat: bodies that have ever had any atmosphere still count as having a very tiny bit even after you suck it all off with terraforming, so expect to see reduced performance from planetside beam weapons on any such bodies.

Which makes gauss PDCs almost never useful.