I'd like to point out one thing I didn't do and another thing that danamo did when doing space battle scenes.

I forgot to turn gamma correction off. With gamma correction on if you turn up the light on the scene gamma correction will turn tthe light back down for you. The beams look much brighter with gamma correction off.

danamo put lights at the actual points where the beams were coming out of the ships. If you are going to 2D or postwork lights having a beam shine on something it gets near to makes it look more realistic. It's a touch people often forget when doing postwork effects. Well done!