I think it might be best treated like Heavy Lasers- people have various opinions, its a preference thing IMO.
With the proliferation of the special armors, it would seem to be employed the same way, which is why I mentioned the Spider carrying a RE-LL should be used like a Solitaire.
Not really. The Heavy Lasers have advantages over conventional weapons which gives them a niche they can fill due to their unusually high damage to weight ratio unlike the RE-Lasers which just flop. The HLL is the lightest headcapper in the game, the HML can give you a devastating close range bracket for very little weight, and the HSL has the absolute highest damage per ton of any reusable weapon in the game and ties with the RL-10.
Now, I do not have the numbers up right now but I do remember that the RELL did actually have an advantage over the standard against Reflective and Hardened armor so that Spider may not be totally useless depending on the opposition, but it is not a headcapper like the Solitaire's HLL so it does not present the same kind of threat the Clan design does.
I wish RE lasers were just a little bit lighter; possibly matching IS Pulse Lasers in weight. I was playing with an idea for Improved RE Lasers: Lasers that weigh the same as standard IS Pulse Lasers, and generate more heat if they hit the specialty armours that are vulnerable to RE Lasers. This way, you pay for RE Lasers' signature ability when you actually use it. Specifications something like below, albeit in rough form. They'd certainly need some playtesting to polish the stats.
Improved Large RE Laser: 7 tons, 5 crits, 9 damage, 10 heat.
Improved Medium RE Laser: 2 tons, 2 crits, 6 damage, 6 heat.
Improved Small RE Laser: 1 ton, 1 crit, 4 damage, 4 heat.
All Improved RE Lasers function as standard RE Lasers but generate 50% more heat if they hit any specialty armours that are vulnerable to standard RE Lasers.
There are lots of easy ways to make them better and it is very obvious from looking at the numbers that they do not really work as intended which leads me to believe that there was deliberate thought given to making them inferior so the technology would be experimented with for a while before dying out.
How does a laser generate more heat based upon what it hits? Does it generate extra heat if it hits internal structure on a unit using one of the armors?
I would assume the laser has two different operating modes. It can either work like a normal laser or a RE-Laser so it can pick the mode more appropriate to dealing with the target it is shooting at. I would personally give the player control over which mode they are using it in because the penetration might not be worth the extra heat against some armor types like FL Armor or you might not be willing to take on quite that much heat for whatever reason.
When this discussion comes up, I always get the feeling no one looks at the BV difference of the suggested "better" weapons. Of course they are "better" they cost about a crapload more BV. The should be "better"...
Given that BV is generally a good indicator of the quality of a design, that is fairly strong evidence that the RE-Laser has issues. Also, BV is purely an out of character mechanic so it has absolutely no bearing on in-universe design.
What I also don't get: So a new weapon isn't the be-all-end-all of weapon development. Why all the fuzz?
There is a difference between being the best at everything and being usable. The problem with the RE-Lasers is that they look like they should be good for shooting up designs with Reflective Armor, but in practice they only break even with the standard models in what is supposed to be their niche. This means that you would do just as well shooting at a target with Reflective Armor with a standard Medium Laser as you would with the REML, so you are always better off with the standard because it works better on other targets. They could have easily improved the performance of the RE-Lasers a little bit (tonnage, damage, heat) to fix this problem while still leaving their performance against standard armor behind the standard models so there is an actual reason to use them, but as written they are basically useless.