[Antares]

Something I've been thinking about.

Would it be possible to modify anti-fighter beams so that they behave more like anti-capship beams--i.e., swinging and arcing as opposed to just "flickering" in and out when they try to follow a target?  A decent example takes place in the endgame cutscene, when a Deimos beam slowly cuts into the hull of a Moloch.

[diamondgeezer]

You want a basic slash beam or a beam that actually tracks its target? The later might be tricksy as there's no existing code AFAIK

[Antares]

A real-time tracking beam would be really cool (if infeasible), but a slash beam would at the very least be more "realistic" than the current "beam on, beam off" way in which the beams work.

[Carl]

errr, you know that only a few of the capship beams slash, right? most of them are beam on, beam off.

[.::Tin Can::.]

I think it would be easier to have the beams as they are, because it IS more accurate to have a beam that pulses in and out, wasting less energy and attempting to whack it one to its target. That is why they have fAAA and hAAA, with each one being poorly accurate or highly accurate. If there was a beam swingin around , attempting to hit something, you just wasting an entire energy reserve attempting to hit a target once.

[Antares]

Not quite.  Big beams remain constant, while small beams fire intermittently.  That's what I mean by beam on, beam off.

[Drew]

then it would loose its rapid-fire-fast-hit accuracy

[.::Tin Can::.]

Thats basically what I said...

[Knight Templar]

So?

[Ace]

What about modifying the slash beams so that the slash movement goes between the "on/off" locations of the AAA beams?

I do think it would be impressive for mods such as the Trek mods where the beam weapons are sometimes tracking.

[.::Tin Can::.]

Originally posted by Knight Templar
So?

Which means its not necessary to reapeat it again. That's all I am saying...

[Knight Templar]

But it would be super l33t, so no-one cares. And if you really were going to loose sleep over it, you could just play with the tables a bit to balance it out.

[Slasher]

This would be really useful for Shadow ships in the TBP MOD, if they ever get around to them.  In the show the beams would always slice up capital ships and vaporize fighters alike with a slashing motion.

[Trivial Psychic]

That just gave me a thought.  If regular anti-cap beams are sustained bursts in one direction at a time, what would happen if you used the beam-fire sexp to order a slash weapon to target a specific ship subsystem?  Would it arc through its assigned target, or would it temporarily behave like a standard anti-cap beam and fire without altering its direction?

Later!

[Bobboau]

it would quite literaly become a normal (type A) beam, there is a code section that basicly turns any beam that has a subsystem targeted into type a (this caused some problems for the new fighter beam code, this bug is still in the version posted in the other thread)

[Trivial Psychic]

Would this still occur if the beam-fire sexp simply ordered the slasher to fire on a ship, without designating a subsystem?  Would the beam slash the target or would it default back to type-A in this scinario?

Later!

[Bobboau]

in that situation you arn't giveing it a subsystem and it would stay what ever it was, any time a beam is acting like it should (ie slashing or pulseing or what ever) it is not getting changed (there are actualy sevral places that a beam type gets changed)