[Kestrellius]

I'm currently working on Mantle, which is a campaign about a Hammer of Light destroyer that gets stranded in Shivan space. I talked about it briefly a while back. I'm actually making very good progress -- I have the basic FREDding done for about seven missions; I just need to add things like directives, objectives, briefings and debriefings, the dialogue, and so on. Time-consuming, but simple enough. Anyway, I'm considering having a mission that takes place very close to a star.

Now, I recently came across an old thread talking about a method for simulating gravity that used a dummy object firing tractor beams that pulled objects toward it. It gave me an idea. The beam piercing effect -- that jet of flame that comes out the other side of a ship when a beam goes through it -- looks a lot like the trail effect you might expect to get when traveling too close to a star. What I'm thinking is that I could have an invisible ship firing invisible, damage-less, massless beams at every ship in the mission, creating the effect.

Problem 1: I don't know how to do any of those things. I'm going to have to learn how to do them anyway, though, so it doesn't matter too much.
Problem 2: Beams only pierce when the target is below a certain hull percentage (I think it's 15%?), and I don't know if there's any way to change that.

Thoughts?

[AdmiralRalwood]

Problem 2: Beams only pierce when the target is below a certain hull percentage (I think it's 15%?), and I don't know if there's any way to change that.

You'll need to apply a custom armor type with a high piercing limit to everything in the mission. This obviously gets more complicated if you use armor types normally, and will make any weapon with piercing effects (if you've defined any) appear to pierce every single ship. There's no way to specify that only one specific beam should tool everything it touches.

[mjn.mixael]

This just seems way complicated and might be easier done with a version of the particles script?

[Kestrellius]

Problem 2: Beams only pierce when the target is below a certain hull percentage (I think it's 15%?), and I don't know if there's any way to change that.

You'll need to apply a custom armor type with a high piercing limit to everything in the mission. This obviously gets more complicated if you use armor types normally, and will make any weapon with piercing effects (if you've defined any) appear to pierce every single ship. There's no way to specify that only one specific beam should tool everything it touches.

That shouldn't be a problem. It's a very simple mission, probably with just fighters. That was why I wanted to have an interesting environmental element in the first place. Thanks!

This just seems way complicated and might be easier done with a version of the particles script?

Unfortunately I have no idea what I'm doing, and consequently the only things I ever think of are giant convoluted hacks for things with very simple solutions. :/ No, but anyway, I'm going to have to learn how modding actually works. I've been trying to look through the mod portal on the wiki, but so far .vp files are still kind of a black box standing in my path on the road to enlightenment.

I guess that's different from scripting, though, which is a different thing that I have nearly tried to learn on a few occasions in my life but never have because syntax is scary.

[JSRNerdo]

Unfortunately I have no idea what I'm doing, and consequently the only things I ever think of are giant convoluted hacks for things with very simple solutions. :/

I guess that's different from scripting, though, which is a different thing that I have nearly tried to learn on a few occasions in my life but never have because syntax is scary.

Welcome to my life, friend!

Scripting is indeed a different thing! It's not that different from FREDding once you get down to it, since FREDding is as I like to think of it just a really really really really fancy GUI with buttons for scripting a mission. Missions are just plaintext files, just like tables and scripts, and SEXps are fairly similar to script functions!