[DarthWang]

What I want to do is have a Shivan destroyer warp in, and fire a slash beam over a convoy of multiple ships (two freighters, a transport, and a cruiser), destroying them all in one sweep.

I can use self destruct to make them explode, but how do I get the beam to hit all of them with the same sweep?

[blowfish]

It is uncharacteristic of the Shivans to use slash beams.  You're better off firing threefour beams.

[Droid803]

You mean four

[Goober5000]

Shivans don't use slash beams.

However, if you wanted to achieve this trick with a slash beam, what you could do is script it using fire-beam and a conventional beam.  Position a fast-moving stealth ship on the far side of the convoy, and fire the beam at it.  Make the stealth ship fly so that the beam will move along the convoy and hit the convoy ships that are in the way.

[Stormkeeper]

If I were to do this trick with a Terran/Vasudan ship, can a slash beam be used as well? Will it live long enough?

[Phoenova]

Just use a repeated fire-beam sexp with about 1 or 2 seconds in between, to give the illusion of a solid beam.

[phreak]

hmmmmm, you're giving me ideas.

[Polpolion]

I've always wanted to do these types of things in missions. Like have a LRBGreen impale and go through a freighter and cruiser and hit a destroyer on the other side.

[Black Wolf]

You could probably do that with a scripted beam battle, as long as you knew exactly where the freighter and the turret would be - just use fire-beam to target a subsystem or a turret or something on the other side of the destroyer and put the freighter in between them. It should work.