Mining Laser

Mining Laser is an alternative mining tool available to be crafted in the Tinkering Table. The Mining Laser has multiple tiered upgrades, which increase the Mining Laser's mining speed and area.

Unlike conventional mining tools, the Mining Laser does not mine in a selected area, but instead rapidly fires projectiles in order to damage tiles. This results in lower precision. This is offset however by the increased power and the ability to dual-wield them for even greater effectiveness. Additionally, they mine background walls as well as foreground.

Upgrades
Once crafted, you can upgrade the Mining Laser in your Tricorder. Each upgrade adds a small boost to mining speed, area, and length of beam.

Upgrading the final form of the mining laser (CT-4 Miner) will increase its beam length (up to tier 20). However, its mining speed, area, etc. will remain unchanged (they reach their maximum at tier 8).

Mining Laser and background blocks
Mining Laser will "accidentally" mine the background blocks when you fire it at nearby foreground blocks.

Mining Laser can't purposely target the background blocks, because it works by creating an "explosion" near the blocks that it hits. But projectiles in Starbound (including the Mining Laser's beam) don't hit background blocks, so Mining Laser won't be able to hit them directly.

Mining Laser as combat weapon
Damage of Mining Laser is very low, but there are armors (such as Spacefarer or Warp Miner) that give a serious bonus to it. It can also be extremely effective against multi-segment enemies like Burrowers.