[Krom]

Most likely someone has already thought of or attempted this, but I'll ask anyway since it is a cool idea (IMHO).  Is it possible without wasteing days of work and time that could be otherwise be spent fixing bugs, eating pizza or servicing the girlfriend?

Think about it, your flying along and get a aspect lock on a shivan bomber at 3000-4000 meters away and let loose a single beam for about .5 seconds or so that kills it, at which point you have to wait 4-6 seconds before you can fire at the next bomber.

The advantages of a fighter beam setup like that would be considerable for balence, you can severly limit the ammo, require a long lock on time (4+ seconds), and prevent dumbfire.  All of those options would drastically reduce the effectiveness of a fighter beam at short range which is a good thing because point and shoot fighter beams are unbalenced just because of the way the game is.

The problems that someone attempting this would probably bump into would be how to make a player weapon fire in a direction other then stright forward (from a secondary gunpoint no less!) and how to make a secondary bank fire a beam weapon and use up ammo.  The first one could possibly borrow a bit from beam turrets code (I'm not famalliar with the code at all, and I'm not much of a programmer either so dont shoot!).  The second one, well you guys got ballistic primarys to work, so I bet you could do it.

KTHXBYE!!1:D

[kasperl]

beams with ammo, interesting.

might be a very cool feature, but it sounds like a b*tch to code.

[SadisticSid]

Can't you just use the ballistic primary tags to give it ammo? :O

Fighterbeams aren't really worth including ATM because you can't define them in FRED, and I think the loadout screen doesn't show them either... hope the SCP team get that sorted out soon. Oh, and the loop sound doesn't seem to play when they're fired either.

[Krom]

You dont need the beam loop for a half a second fire, anything longer wouldnt be pratical for a fighter beam, I mean comeon, where is a fighter going to get the power to fire a beam for more then half a second?

[Woolie Wool]

Fighter beams have no warmup/warmdown or firewait. They are continuous-fire weapons.

[Carl]

i'm still waiting for regular lasers as aspect seeking secondaries.

[Flaser]

Originally posted by Carl
i'm still waiting for regular lasers as aspect seeking secondaries.

Amen to that.

Though if I want to be fussy, you wouldn't see laser beams in space (*unless your're in a nebula) only particles that travel slow enough and most of all  - are radiating!

BTW I had an idea - how about setting up special sensors or sensors displays, so you could see the heat view of everything or a low light view for those pretty dark "Behind the Moon" scenarios.

[Carl]

Originally posted by Flaser
(*unless your're in a nebula)

not even. nebulas are millions of times less dense than the earth's atmosphere.

[Woolie Wool]

I say let's not even call them lasers, not even the ML-16. They don't look or act like lasers. Let's call them pulse cannons or particle cannons or something like that,

[Trivial Psychic]

Before delving into the Mod community myself, I had an idea for a fighter mounted beam weapon, but I'm not sure if it its possible.  It would be loaded as a secondary with its own power supply and infinite ammo, just like a primary.  If you select it in single fire mode, it acts like a dumbfire weapon, firing down the centerline of the craft in about 0.33 sec. bursts with a 0.75 to 1 sec. recharge time.  If you select twin fire mode, it acts as an aspect seeker weapon, more suited to firing on bombers, and anything larger, though you could use it on heavy fighters.  It also features a reheat time in this mode, so you can fire every 5 - 7 sec., in a 2 - 3 sec. burst of higher power... better suited to knocking out specific subsystems and turrets.

Later!

[Flaser]

I like the idea of using ammunition for a beam turret.

Even a cruiser has trouble using them, so there's no way a fighter's reactor would handle the job.
So it takes the power in a compact form instead, something like a depletable fusion core, that's filled with expensive and volatile isotopes, so high degree one-time fusion can be easly achieved.

[Krom]

Exactly, beam cannons requireing some sort of ammo because the massive power requirements are well beond that of a fighters reactor output.  I think the hard part of getting a aspect locking beam cannon on a fighter will be getting it to shoot in a direction other then stright forward and convinceing a primary to lock.  Why someone would want normal lasers to fire from a secondary bank doesnt make much sense but if someone got a beam cannon to fire from one, it probably wouldnt be much of a stretch to make a laser fire from it also.   it would prolly require the ability to fire a laser from the secondary banks before you could get a beam to fire.

-Krom

[Hippo]

this would be interesting... i had a plan for an upped terran huge turret, put in the secondary bays after a bug did that to me in fs1, and just say that you had limited power...

I'd like to see the beams though...

[##UnknownPlayer##]

This would be a cool feature for low power interceptor weapons. You target the bomb and a very low damage beam fires at it and takes it out at long range. It would look mad if we could make the AI do it properly (envisage a wing of Perseus' flying through a cloud of bombs with beams shooting all around them taking them out). You could probably even adapt it as a sort of 50% chance point defense weapon to take out incoming missiles (if anyone's played USA in CnC Generals, it'd be kinda like that tank they have). Having Shivan bombers that can take out incoming missiles (like Trebs, which are only fired as one or two and so would easily go down to such a system) would make them soooo much more deadly, yet so much more cool.

[IceFire]

Ahh...yes like the Paladin tank (and the upcoming Avenger Humvee) in C&C Generals.  That is cool...its a slow firing laser that essentially provides point defense against incoming missiles.

Saturation fire gets through but single shots don't.

[JC128]

bah Particle Beam owns all in C&C Generals. Refit the colossus with one of those =) there your aspect seeking beam

[mnftg64]

going with flaser's idea and assuming we get this to work, we should set it up to when a fight is destroyed and it has the beam weapon on it, it would have a larger than normal shockwave, due to the energy source of the beam weapon.

[Krom]

Good idea!

[JC128]

That sounds awesome, kamikazie fighters in multiplayer >=)

[Fury]

Why is it that everyone says that no fighter can use beam weaponry for long? Aren't you guys forgetting mods and total conversions? In those things can be very different from standard FS universe.