I place the dark beam at the start of the mission and all I get is a little dribble. Might as well be sneezing at the creeper. 20 min no change to beam output. Am I missing something?
Do you have enough energy production? You need +15.0 for the dark beam.
The Dark Beam can be turned on and off, and it defaults to off. If the line is blue and slightly transparent, it's off and is simply showing you where it will target when you turn it on. If it's more red, makes a humming sound, and annihilates all in its path, THEN it's active. However if the issue is that the red laser keeps flickering on and off, only doing damage sometimes, then the issue is like ea3401 said and you need to give it more energy.