Wow.
You'll need to do the FRED 2 tutorial. To make the beams fire, open the Events editor. Create a new event. The new event should look like
"When
blah blah
do-nothing"
Replace "blah blah" with "has-arrived-delay" by right clicking, clicking on replace operator, clicking on objectives, and then clicking on has-arrived-delay
Right click the line that appeared below "has-arrived-delay" and select the ship you want with beams firing.
Then click on "do-nothing", right click, hit replace operator, hit change, hit beam free all.
Right click the line below "beam-free-all" and pick the ship you want again.
Now someone close this thread.