Thanks!
I could introduce them after other laser weapons, certainly, but it would break the "real life" tech tree. The US military is already using
(link) large electrolasers. (Not as stun weapons, but to detonate stored explosives in warehouses in Afghanistan.) This uses the same technology, just smaller than we currently have it. I don't think near-infrared lasers are currently used, though I could be wrong. It's not like the military always tells us what its doing.
The benefit to switching them anyway is that I wanted the electrolasers to be weaker than their counterparts. That means, right now, the electrolasers have to be weaker than the conventional weapons (rifle, pistol, etc.) If they come
after laser weapons, then I can make them more damaging, but weaker than their laser counterparts.
Finally, the recolors: I'm considering having all the "laser" weapons have the same shape, but each tier of the laser tech tree would be a different color. I was hoping "blue for electrolaser, red for normal laser," and so forth. To do that, I needed to take the lasers and "standardize" them. I swapped the colors of the heavy laser and laser pistol to match the laser rifle, then took all the red parts of all three weapons and made them blue. Do you think that'll be too confusing? (If so, I'll need to find a good sprite artist. I'm pretty good with small tweaks and recolors, but I can't just make new weapons from scratch...)