[-Norbert-]

Considering how the beams are only kept in their tight pass by a magnetic bottle, maybe you'd just have to make the bottle cone-shaped or complete disable it and let (FS2's pseudo-)physics take care of spreading out the beam.

But considering how the beams only reach their range due to being so tightly focussed, any such "shotgun-beam" would have a very short range, probably even shorter than most fighter-based primaries.

[Soulrheever]

I would assume the focus of the magnetic bottle is largely achieved through the setup of the hardware itself, and is therefore nearly impossible to adjust...

[General Battuta]

A lot of the beam mechanics in BP, such as the need to construct a magnetic bottle from emitter to target, are designed to make it hard to achieve a few outcomes that feel degenerate, uninteresting, or corrosive to the internal logic of the setting.

One outcome we want to avoid is the ability to blind-fire beams like big lightsabers. If you could do that, jamming would be uninteresting (since you are at short visual range and relative motion is trivial to adjust for) and everyone would shoot their anti-warship beams at bombers. TAG beacons would become less interesting: why do we need a special transmitter attached to the target just to perform a trivial aimpoint calculation?

So we say that beams aren't lasers, they're huge confined blowtorches, and you can't just trivially fire them at an arbitrary point in space, you generally need to have a valid target to draw the bottle to (unless you're a slasher). Jamming can mess with your bottle, so even if you have a clear visual solution, you can't just shoot and get a hit.

Of course, it's obviously possible to have a beam that discharges into empty space, since we see AAAs do that all the time, and even direct-fire anti-warship beams sometimes slip off target. What's important is that it takes time and data to build the magnetic bottle, and it costs a lot of power and heat to fire. This prevents yonder Orion from firing its BGreens at incoming bomber waves, because it's impossible to build a bottle straight to such a small target and hard to build a bottle to an arbitrary point with much confidence of a hit. Slashers are more robust to jamming because they're already wheeling around crazily, but they can be jammed too.

The design goal in both gameplay and fiction is to promote shooting beams at other big things, reward clever use of ECM/ECCM/ESM, and discourage **** like a Diomedes waving its Bull Frosts around at fighters like huge death scissors.

[-Sara-]

A lot of the beam mechanics in BP, such as the need to construct a magnetic bottle from emitter to target, are designed to make it hard to achieve a few outcomes that feel degenerate, uninteresting, or corrosive to the internal logic of the setting.

One outcome we want to avoid is the ability to blind-fire beams like big lightsabers. If you could do that, jamming would be uninteresting (since you are at short visual range and relative motion is trivial to adjust for) and everyone would shoot their anti-warship beams at bombers. TAG beacons would become less interesting: why do we need a special transmitter attached to the target just to perform a trivial aimpoint calculation?

So we say that beams aren't lasers, they're huge confined blowtorches, and you can't just trivially fire them at an arbitrary point in space, you generally need to have a valid target to draw the bottle to (unless you're a slasher). Jamming can mess with your bottle, so even if you have a clear visual solution, you can't just shoot and get a hit.

Of course, it's obviously possible to have a beam that discharges into empty space, since we see AAAs do that all the time, and even direct-fire anti-warship beams sometimes slip off target. What's important is that it takes time and data to build the magnetic bottle, and it costs a lot of power and heat to fire. This prevents yonder Orion from firing its BGreens at incoming bomber waves, because it's impossible to build a bottle straight to such a small target and hard to build a bottle to an arbitrary point with much confidence of a hit. Slashers are more robust to jamming because they're already wheeling around crazily, but they can be jammed too.

The design goal in both gameplay and fiction is to promote shooting beams at other big things, reward clever use of ECM/ECCM/ESM, and discourage **** like a Diomedes waving its Bull Frosts around at fighters like huge death scissors.

You really had 'bottled' that up for a while, didn't you?  You're practically 'beaming'.

Okay sorry..

[Scotty]

A Diomedes scything beams at fighters like huge death scissors is satisfying as **** to imagine.

[matrixdude32]

You have to remember also that beams work on a thermal principle. Each individual particle in the plasma depositing it's individual  energy onto the enemy hull. if the beam is to wide, the heat will be dispersed on the target in to wide an area to be effective at melting through the hull. So if a shotgun or otherwise beam was made, it might just warm up the Shields XD

[Fury]

A Diomedes scything beams at fighters like huge death scissors is satisfying as **** to imagine.

Distance traveled by slasher beams are directly proportional to target's dimensions. A slasher beam travels far, far smaller distance when it targets a fighter as opposed to a cruiser. As a matter of fact, I believe BP should have at least one slasher type anti-fighter beam. It'd be nice if there was a way to override slasher starting and ending point distance to a fixed value regardless of target's dimensions.

[-Norbert-]

They have an  anti-fighter slasher, though I'm not sure if it's actually used in any mission so far. But it certainly exists in FRED.

And the thing about the distance a slasher travels is just how the game calculates matters, not necessarily how it's supposed to work in-universe.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

They have an  anti-fighter slasher, though I'm not sure if it's actually used in any mission so far. But it certainly exists in FRED.

It used to be used in Delenda Est, iirc (I'm not sure it's still the case).

[Darius]

TerSlashBlueAAAs are cool and i plan to use more of them.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Distance traveled by slasher beams are directly proportional to target's dimensions. A slasher beam travels far, far smaller distance when it targets a fighter as opposed to a cruiser. As a matter of fact, I believe BP should have at least one slasher type anti-fighter beam. It'd be nice if there was a way to override slasher starting and ending point distance to a fixed value regardless of target's dimensions.

Well, the slasher targeting code could be modified to adjust the distance between the two target points to fit some tabled value...

[Fury]

I think the biggest obstacle is to come up with a way to take accuracy into account. You can't just take two random spots in space.

[CT27]

Since we're talking about jamming in general:

If GTVA wins this war and gets free/unfettered access to UEF technology, could beam jamming be used against the Shivans?

[-Norbert-]

I suppose so, though not for long, since they'd pretty quickly adjust to block the jamming.

[CT27]

On the technology of this, how does a TAG beacon 'override' the beam jamming?  (IIRC, in "Delenda Est" the AWACS was TAGed first before the Carthage destroyed it)

[X3N0-Life-Form]

My guess is that, in addition to lighting up a target, a TAG beacon can be used to provide sort of a magnetic anchor or something on the target, allowing Alliance ships to overcome various aspects of the jamming.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Slash beams fire during Delenda Est, which means the ECM environment is not so extreme that magnetic bottles can't form at all. With the precise data from the TAG beacon, presumably enough of the difficulty of forming the magnetic bottle is overcome that it allows direct-fire beams to form.

[Kolgena]

I've personally rationalized it by assuming that beam generation and targeting involves very complex math and possibly subspace mechanics beyond just forming a magnetic bottle. I mean, how do you make such a bottle without sucking in every ferromagnetic object for miles if not with subspace trickery? How do simultaneous beams not create a hilariously dangerous plasma storm? You cannot point and shoot them just like you cannot point and jump with jump drives. Do anything to **** up or spoof the reading/generation of local gravity/EM/subspace tensors with ECMs, and the beam is liable to miss by several degrees. Slash beams don't care if you miss by several degrees, but a point beam does.

[CT27]

Slightly off-topic, but how is GTVA jamming different than UEF jamming (i.e., the GTVA jamming that can temporarily disable UEF torpedoes)?

[Phantom Hoover]

Presumably it works the obvious way, jamming their guidance so it'd be useless to fire them (not necessarily actively preventing them from being fired).