Say you have an ultraviolet (20 nanometer) laser cannon with a 3.2 meter lens. Your hapless target spacecraft is at a range of 12,900 kilometers (12,900,000 meters). The Beam Radius equation says that the beam radius at the target will be about 4 centimeters (0.04 meters), so the beam will be irradiating about 50 cm2 of the target's skin (area of circle with radius of 4 centimeters). If the hapless target spacecraft had a hull of steel armor, the armor has a heat of vaporization of about 60 kiloJoules/cm3. Say the armor is 12.5 cm thick. So for the laser cannon to punch a hole in the armor it will have to remove about 625 cm3 of steel (volume of cylinder with radius of 4 cm and height of 12.5 cm). 625 * 60 = 37,500 kiloJoules. If the laser pulse is one second, this means the beam requires a power level of 37,500 watts or 38 megawatts at the target.
Most people instinctively know Burnside's Zeroth Law of space combat: Science fiction fans relate more to human beings than to silicon chips.