regarding the laser rifle burst be superior to the scatter laser, i think youre using the weapon wrong ... its a precision (less than the sniper laser rifle) laser weapon, use it for medium-long ranges in aimed single shot, should hit, where the burst is only medium range ... so you should reconsider how you use your weapons, rifles are good at medium-long range, while heavy weapons (mg,scatterlaser and so on) are good for medium-short, esp. because there is a movement/aim penalty for heavy weapons. the shorter the range the more efficient the mg weapons get.
just my two cents
edit: cant reproduce your "bug" with the corvettes datacores, mine get deposited inside my stores as soon as the gc-mission ends, can see that i got 6 or so allready in store... if i just had enough hangars . you should try revalidating your game files, and reinstall the mod/s (xCE and XNT) maybe something wrong in your files.