Weapon design question

[PlasmaKrab]

Laser: Essentially can hit whatever it can see quite easily, but its effects would be blocked by obscurants and performace degraded by weather effect.

For laser, I am personnally quite fond of one solution, which is a flame weapon (vehicle flame) with low warhead size and high HEK, which will animate just like an autocannon (small puffs) and set fire to the hex. If you add a custom sound (sharp, dry clack) you can make a good high-energy, burst-firing laser.
You can use the HE warhead as standard (that would prevent you from having messages like "firing laser gun with HEAT ammo"... ) and set it to a high penetration. Anyway, a HEAT laser will be subjeced to ERA defence too...

As for having it subjected to wheather and smoke, the only way I can see is, as some already put it, to affect it to a low-vis unit which won't be able to target through smoke. Technically it could fire, but the result is just the same.