Dual plasma beams do weird things

System

For some reason when I had a science ship(moved on to cruiser now) I was using dual plasma beams, and a lot of the time when I targeted shield subsystems(maybe others as well, but shields the most) they wouldnt fire properly. They seemed to do damage(though I often had other stuff shooting as well), but instead of the beam shooting out, I just got an extra big flare on the ship. Not a hundred percent sure if this was a bug or I was doing something wierd but I figured I should mention it.