I made a fighter-usable beam weapon for use on Shivan ships, intended as a combination subsystem disruptor, warship shield drainer, EMP weapon, and energy leech. Please note that the "no pierce shields" tag is indeed active, as it is with all beam cannons in my mod. Also, much of the beam information was copied from the "SRed" beam weapon, usually carried on cruisers and corvettes.
My first problem is that the weapon completely ignores the fire wait when used - it can fire once every second, regardless of what I type in (original fire wait was supposed to be 4 seconds, making it a very slow-firing weapon). It also seems as if the $Armor Factor, $Subsystem Factor, and $Shield Factor are broken, as they do not work properly - during initial testing, I set the $Damage of the beam to 15, and $Shield Factor to 40. It could not even noticably damage the shields of a Lilith.
I changed the $Damage to 150 and the $Shield Factor to 4000, and it finally will do damage to cruiser and corvette shields, and take them out in a few shots. However, even if I set the $Armor Factor to zero, it still rips through hulls quite fast, and with the $Subsystem Factor set to 0.0000000000000001, it is an insta-kill against any turret or subsystem once the shield is down. That's not supposed to happen.
I want this weapon to do insane amounts of damage to shields only. It is supposed to have only a limited effect as a subsystem disruptor and an energy leech, and be completely useless against armor.
The following is the info from the weapons.tbl entry:
$Name: Aurora
+Title: XSTR("Shivan Aurora", 3243)
+Description:
XSTR(
"Subsystem Disruptive EMP Beam Weapon
Level 0 Hull Damage
Anti-Capital Shield Damage", 3244)
$end_multi_text
+Tech Title: XSTR("Shivan Electronic Suppression Weapon", 146)
+Tech Anim: Tech_Subach_HL-7
+Tech Description:
XSTR(
"The Aurora is a rather exotic beam cannon, firing an intense, energy negation pulse. The resulting bursts of EMP can permanently damage a target's subsystems, while the weapon actively seeks and neutralizes energy reserves. It is particularly devestating against shields, even those of warships.", 3245)
$end_multi_text
$Model File: none
; The following fields (preceded by @) are only required for laser
; rendering, which requires that "Model File:" be none.
; These are the same values that used to be hard-coded:
@Laser Bitmap: none
@Laser Color: 250, 30, 30
@Laser Length: 0.0
@Laser Head Radius: 0.30
@Laser Tail Radius: 0.30
$Mass: 0.0
$Velocity: 1000.0 ;; speed of the weapon (initially) -- may or may not change
$Fire Wait: 4 ;; in seconds
$Damage: 150 ;; NOTE: for beam weapons this is kind of a "continuous" damage applied every few fractions of a second that the beam is on.
$Armor Factor: 0.0
$Shield Factor: 4000.0
$Subsystem Factor: 0.0000000000000001
$Lifetime: 1.0 ;; How long this thing lives
$Energy Consumed: 2 ;; Energy used when fired
$Cargo Size: 0.0 ;; Amount of space taken up in weapon cargo
$Homing: NO
$LaunchSnd: 251 ;; The sound it makes when fired
$ImpactSnd: 88 ;; The sound it makes when it hits something
+Weapon Range: 5000 ;; Limit to range at which weapon will actively target object
$Flags: ( "esuck" "player allowed" "beam" "no pierce shields" )
$Icon: iconSD4
$Anim: SD4
$Impact Explosion: none
$BeamInfo:
+Type: 4 ;; 0 - 4 are valid #'s
+Life: 1.0 ;; how long it lasts once the beam is actually firing
+Warmup: 0 ;; warmup time in ms
+Warmdown: 0 ;; warmdown time in ms
+Radius: 3.0 ;; muzzle glow radius in meters
+PCount: 0 ;; particles spewed every interval
+PRadius: 1.9 ;; particle radius
+PAngle: 65.0 ;; angle of the random "cone" where the particles are generated
+PAni: particleexp01 ;; particle ani
+BeamSound: 246 ;; the looping beam-firing sound
+WarmupSound: 251 ;; associated warmup sound
+WarmdownSound: 251 ;; associated warmdown sound
+Muzzleglow: thrusterglow01 ;; muzzle glow bitmap
+Shots: 0 ;; only used for TYPE 3 beams
+ShrinkFactor: 0.1 ;; what percentage of lifetime where beam starts shrinking (0.1 == 10% life left)
+ShrinkPct: 10 ;; what percentage of max width we subtract per second
$Section: ;; one section of the beam (you can have up to 5)
+Width: 2.0 ;; width of the section
+Texture: ionred ;; texture for this section
+RGBA Inner: 0 0 0 80 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+RGBA Outer: 0 0 0 0 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+Flicker: 0.1 ;; how much it flickers (0.0 to 1.0)
+Zadd: 2.0 ;; hehe
$Section: ;; one section of the beam
+Width: 3.0 ;; width of the section
+Texture: beam-red2 ;; texture for this section
+RGBA Inner: 0 0 0 60 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+RGBA Outer: 0 0 0 0 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+Flicker: 0.1 ;; how much it flickers (0.0 to 1.0)
+Zadd: 1.0 ;; hehe
$Section: ;; one section of the beam
+Width: 4.0 ;; width of the section
+Texture: beam-red ;; texture for this section
+RGBA Inner: 255 0 0 40 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+RGBA Outer: 60 0 0 0 ;; rgba values (only for non-textured beam compiles)
+Flicker: 0.1 ;; how much it flickers (0.0 to 1.0)
+Zadd: 0.0 ;; hehe
Thanks in advance.
