I experimented with long range on pulse lasers vs efficient on beams.
I found that with gimballed pulses, it was near impossible to hit smaller ships at long range, whereas it was pretty good against large targets. And I also realized that I could easily hug large targets (DD5 thrusters) where I could keep them at effective range of my beams. And for smaller ships, by the time my gimballed or turreted lasers could reliably hit them, they were typically at ranges where beams could still outperform pulses (beam dropoff is 600m, but it also does something like 40% more damage than pulses, so I'd say beams still have the damage edge until, say, 1000m maybe?).
In the end, I went back to the efficient beams. Much more dependable.
Long range I find is best with fixed weapons where you can pinpoint target a ship at long range rather than rely on the occasionally wonky tracking on gimballed weapons.