Talk:Beam Laser/@comment-205.222.248.112-20141218134648/@comment-90.222.86.59-20150111015114

It means value out of 10, at the moment it is basically a nonsense value. You can say that the fixed weapon does more damage than the gimbal which hurts more than the turret but other than rate of fire, there is zero usable date to say that a specific weapon can do a specific amount of damage to a specific hull and shield configuration over a specific amount of time (even if you ignore the lack of stated recharge/reload time).

Thermal load is likewise a useless value as we do not have any actual numerical data to map and run calculations from. (unless some poor fool has run comparisons using a sidewinder vs each other ship using a size 1 beam/pulse weapon as the base unit of %heat/second value).

If there is a third party site/table with useful, weapon mount fields of fire, average comparative damage and equipment breakdowns then I would love to make use of it.

TL:DR, Elite Dangerous is mostly devoid of hard numerical data players can use to properly theory craft ship setups.