Refactor & prepare laser origins introduction

[demmerichs]

These commits just represent some refactoring I did in order to easily introduce the loading of laser origins. I will link the follow-up PR here after creation, which explains why laser origins are interesting. However, I separated the below commits into a PR because they represent only minor fixes and otherwise non-functional-changing code refactoring.

I am happy to incorporate any feedback, if the maintainers are interested in merging this PR.