Both ideas for Vorlon and ISA Victory main gun power-ups would require both some source code changes and possibly some model changes. The 1st idea should require fewer code changes, but will be more cumbersome to use. The second would require more significant code changes, but would be far more flexible.
1 - Fake It With Extra Turrets
Have a turret on the end of each of the booms, with their turret normals aimed at the focal point for the main gun. Then, create a weapon of similar effect to the main gun, but with a smaller beam glow and beam, and a beam range (lifetime figure) configured to terminate exactly at the main gun focal point. Then get a source code alteration of the fire-beam sexp, so that instead of requiring the targetting of a ship of ship-subsystem, an option of "< zero axis >" or something would cause it to fire precisely down its turret normal. Then, use a complexe series of beam fire events chained up, so that the boom turrets fire just before the warmup of the main gun starts. Also, the duration of the focusing beams would need to be such that they terminate exactly when the main-gun terminates. While this system works, the complexe series of events to fire and lock these turrets, means that they can ONLY be fired by sexp. You'd also need events to either protect the focusing turrets from taking dammage, or knock out the main gun of one goes down.
2 - Table-Controled Secondary Effects
This second option would use additional table data attatched to the main gun turret entry, to indicate that a series of satalite effects should be generated. The number of satalite effects would be unrestricted, so the number of these effects that are generated, is dictated by how many entries there are for the turret. The position of each satalite effect would be a series of xyz figures, relative to the turret itself. To make things simpler, to obtain these figures, simply open up the model in a pof editor program and make as though you're gonna add additional fire-points to that turret. Place the firepoint where you would want one of the arcs to begin and copy that xyz figure into the table entry. Naturally, don't save the extra firepoints on the model. Now, the next bit of data could either be included in the turret entry entirely, or have the turret entry reference an entry in the weapons table. Either way, the code needs to know what what glow effect should be placed at the tip of the boom and what beam effects should be used as the energy arcs aiming to the main turret's focal point. Both of these effects require most of the data that you would find in the beam data for existing beam weapons, so perhaps an entry in the weapons table for the effect should be used, which is referenced by the turret effect entry. This would be similar to the dummy entry for Idea-1. The data that wouldn't be needed by the code, would be the beam range and lifetime figures, as the code would automatically terminate the beams at the focal point. There would however, need to be proper duration data, timed so that the energy arcs terminate when the main gun does. In the turret effect entry however, there would need to be a pre-fire figure, to instruct the main gun, how long it should wait before generating its main warmup glow and firing, so that the arcs can appear to begin before the main effect does. I hope someone understood that.
Since the SCP team is in the middle of a code-freeze, these are just ideas for the moment and (to my knowledge) are not even being considered by the team, and I haven't realy put it to them, since there's no point pestering them about something that they can't get into right now anyway... assuming that these ideas are even possible.
Later!
