This is inspired by a modified Plasma Burn system I put together this evening for a ship in my mod, and I'm so gorram proud of it that I think it should be a vanilla feature.
Basically, when you use the Plasma Burn system as on the Shrike and Odyssey (though I haven't considered the balance of the latter), if you
hold down the system activation key it consumes both charges in succession and extends the burn as if it was one double-length burn. So, with two charges you can perform two separate 0.5 second burns, or hold it down for one 1.0 second burn.
(The system I've put together consumes charges one at a time, as the duration of each system "use" runs out, but it's also built for 3+ total charges so you can divide up the burns as you please with a bit of good timing.)
I thought it was so much fun, and could probably be done much more simply in the base game than through my hacky wacky code, that it might be neat to have as a vanilla feature of at least the Shrike's Plasma Burn. Thoughts?