It happens with all weapons. Beams fire out the back. Missiles fly out of the back of their launchers. Mass drivers are the worst. They fly out of the back of guns, miss their target on screen, yet still explode and deal damage.
I think that some subtle animations such as a buildup glow for beam weapons would also be a nice touch.
It already exists for the Psyonic Beam. An orange glow appears around the beam-gun, then an orange rope-like beam fires, twists into a semi-spiral upon hitting the target, and then the spiral explodes.
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Components that animate only in the combat viewer would be the best. Like enter combat, a ship's beam launcher lights up and extends on a robotic arm, pointing towards it's target. Another ship's turns it's guns off of safe mode, and turrets spin, gunports open and a barrel extends out of the turret, leading it's target to counteract evasive maneuvers. For missile weapons, a little sensor-type 'eyeball' on the launcher should point at the target and keep 'looking' at it to guide the missile until it's own homing system takes over.
However, idle animations should only be visible at maximum zoom. Otherwise, they would take too much memory to be feasible.
