[Trivial Psychic]

Howdy All:

I recently created my first beam-primary, so I had to do some investigations into what the various fields do and how to manipulate them.  I looked into the WiKi but coudn't find the data I wanted.  Someone with serious beam experience should fill in those gaps.

First, I see be the comments in the beam code, that there are 5 possible beam types (0-4).  Type 0 are your standard cap-ship big guns.  Type 1 are your slash weapons.  Type 3 are the AAA beams that have the "+shots:" field active.  I'd like to know what types 2 and 4 are meant for, and if they do anything important in FSO.

I also would like to know if the "Stream" weapons flag, used on laser primaries, would work for beams.  I was hoping to give the beam primary a very short fire duration and fire-wait, with a high energy comsumption, then use the "Stream" flag so that I could get it to fire continuously but only as long as the fire button is depressed or until the energy supplies bottom out.  So far my beams will continue firing for their duration regardless of how long you hold down the trigger.

Later!

[Singh]

hmm...
Dunno bout the other stuff, but i suggest you look at omniscaper's ships and tables, since he has managed to get exactly the effect you are looking for in his defiant and danube class starships.

[Trivial Psychic]

*bump*

Any more feedback from experienced beam moders?

[Sesquipedalian]

You aren't using FSO, are you?  Fighter beams there do all that you are asking (firing only while tirgger is depressed and using your energy reserves)

[Trivial Psychic]

Actually, I am using FSO.  My initial attempts produced a beam which would continue to fire for however long the table defenition said, even if I only tapped the trigger.  I've since dropped both the fire-wait and beam duration to 0.1, and the warmup/warmdown to 100 ms each.  I also removed the beam-fire and warmup sounds.  The result is a rapid-fire pulse beam, but I would prefer a beam that fired continuously without the pulse effect both visually and soundwise.  I'm gonna try to drop the warmup and warmdown to 0 and see if that smooths things more.  I was hoping that the "stream" flag or another numeric beam type would be more effective, but I don't know enough about this to know how it works or what fields I may need to add... hence this thread.

Later!

[terren]

are you using the old buggy fighter beam code or bob's new beam code?
the old code works exactly like what your asking for, beam on then off in an instant.  The new code works more like cap beams, with a warmup and warm down time.  atleast as far as I remember.  I think the thread is in the new FSO builds subforum, I'd post a link but I'm in kind of a hurry.  Hope this helps.

[Trivial Psychic]

It would seem that Bob won't be fixing this until 3.6 is out the door.  I also found out that beam type 4 is for the RBC.  I guess I'll have to just wait it out.

Thanks all.

Later!

[Trivial Psychic]

I thought I'd post this here rather than starting up a new thread.

For any of you that know Babylon 5, you should know about Telepaths and their ability to jam Shadow vessels, causing them to stop in place and not fire their weapons.  Over in the TBP forum someone was mentioning trying to account for Teeps in FS2 combat, and a thought came to mind.  I had the idea of using a beam weapon, with no beam glow, no texture, no impact effect, no sounds, and barely any dammage.  It would however have the ability to disrupt the Shadow ships.  I thought about trying to use the "leech" effect, but I was then reminded that that won't work on anything other than a fighter.  I then thought about the D-Missile from FS1, said to be able to shut down a destroyer for a short period of time.  I tried a beam weapon (textured) with the "electronics" and "puncture" flags from the D-Missile, but it didn't seem to do anything.  I then tried to use the D-Missile itself on my player fighter to test out how effective it was on cap-ships, but it took like 4 hits to have any effect on it, which only lasted a few seconds.

I'd like some input on what settings such a beam weapon should have to amplify the effect, so that a destroyer would be completely disabled and unable to fire as long as its held within the beam.  Or, if someone in the know can tell me if current SCP (04-26 build) even supports these flags on a beam weapon.

Later!