Most energy weapons are based on using light waves for causing damage. Due to the nature of that energy, they cannot be used by anything while it is traveling faster than the speed of light. (this does not include ships that use jump gates to enter hyper space, although they get to their destinations as if they were traveling faster than light, they actually stay at sub light speeds.) If they attempt to use energy weaponry it will miss, or backfire, destroying the weapon emplacement.
Lasers are beams of concentrated light, although other forms of energy waves have also been referred to as lasers. They are commonly used to read bar-codes in grocery stores, as pointers in presentations, or for targeting weaponry. Lasers are not visible except for where the beam is hitting.
High powered lasers can be used to cut. This could be for purposes of mining or for combat. In the form of a handgun, a laser beam can cut through something just as effectively as a bullet. They are also useful for creating fires for survival purposes.
Ships can use lasers in two ways. They can use them to attempt to slice pieces off of their target, or they can use them to burrow tiny holes into the hull of their enemy's ship and rely on explosive decompression to radically expand the hole and cause more damage than the laser itself could do on its own.
The largest disadvantage to using a laser as a weapon is that the beam can be deflected by reflective surfaces. Fortunately such surfaces are very difficult to maintain.
Phasers are lasers that phase the light beams they emit to quadruple the energy they contain. This also makes the energy beam visible.
Due to the more dynamic aspect of the beam it is also possible to adjust it, and the effects it causes. While lasers can only affect one point at a time, a phaser beam can be widened to effect a larger area at once. In addition, Phasers can be used to disrupt a beings nervous system, effectively stunning them. They can be used to excite the molecules of objects, making them extremely hot. On higher power settings they can cause lethal amounts of damage, and on their highest settings they can cause the objects they hit to vaporize.
Reflective surfaces are able to deflect a phaser beam for close to a second before the energy from the phaser alters the reflective surface enough for it to burn through.
Blasters are similar to phasers but are much more limited. They are essentially a sudden burst of visible energy, which appears as a solid bolt of energy that passes from the firing mechanism to the target (phasers and lasers are both solid lines, and lasers are not visible at all). Some blasters are capable of burrowing through objects, but most of them are set to simply explode against the target.
Blasters also have power settings, at the low end of the spectrum they can stun the same way phasers do, on the middle levels they explode against their targets, at the higher settings they drill through as far as they can before appearing to explode against its target.
The energy fired by Blasters can be referred to as laser disks, Turbolasers, laser blasts, blaster bolts, etc.
Blasters are not deflected at all by reflective surfaces, although the solid aspect of their blasts can sometimes be deflected by strong magnetic fields.
Disrupters are energy beams that disrupt the molecules of their targets. This results in weakening of metal so that it looses integrity and explodes out, a person's internal organs being scrambled, or the total disintegration of the area hit. Due to their nature, it is often much more painful to be injured by a disrupter than the relatively clean burns left by a Phaser or laser.
Disrupters can also be used to stun by disrupting a persons metabolism, but there is a greater risk of death than with cleaner weaponry.
Some disrupters use plasmatic energy, others are able to create the same effects by altering phased light blasts, still others use sonic energy. Sonic disrupters can only be used in an atmosphere, while most other forms of disrupters do not have that limitation.
This weapon type fires off a plasma ball, which spreads out upon hitting the target. The plasma causes mainly heat damage, cooking and burning its target instantly. The enveloping effect means that precision is not necessary for an effective kill shot.
Unlike most of the other weapons this one does not try to destroy outright. Although some can be adjusted to disrupt the nervous systems of organic life forms, most of them are perfectly harmless to living beings.
Ion Cannons disrupt electrical systems, shorting out circuits, and blanking memory systems with the goal of eliminating the machinery while leaving any people unharmed. This makes Ion weaponry suitable for piracy (providing hostages, and a ship that can be relatively easy to repair later) as well as other purposes.