Something similar is possible with Blender too, but you map the first slice of track and when duplicated the mapping sticks.

Update: with help I have a really good laser cannon script for Blender now. It features:

charge shots or regular shots (depending if you hold down the fire button)
outputs the shot power (at the minute in debug mode, but this can be outputted to an on-screen text object)
stops firing when the battery power = 0
laser bolt length matches the distance between the gun and the target (so the laser bolt does not 'go through' the model... unless it explodes!)
a smaller explosion is created on the hit point of the laser (at the minute a placeholder).

I will recycle some aspects of this for my other weapons (such as the jamming beam, vulcan cannon etc).