[DarthWang]

Would it be possible to make a huge subspace opening, but then instead of a ship coming out, a beam shoots out?

[Titan]

there was something called a subspace beam on hades... 

[Flipside]

I suppose you could do something with scripting and a warp-model with a firing point.

[Mobius]

Or with a blip model with a beam gunpoint and the SEXP that triggers a warp...that'd be easier.

[Droid803]

Interesting idea.
If I was going to do this, I'd probably make a special warp cargo in FRED, make a blip model with a beam turret, trigger the warp, then fire-beam.

[Mobius]

Hey, I have a better idea: a gunmounted blip armed with a special beam using the subspace effect as charge boost...I have something similar in Steadfast which works admirably.

[DarthWang]

What about Subspace openings that absorb beams?

My idea is to have a ship with a subspace defense, so when you fire a beam at it (this probably has to be scripted), a subspace hole opens up to intercept the beam, then another subspace hole opens up and fires the beam back at the attacker.

[JGZinv]

Sounds a lot like the Vong in the SW books with their Dovin Basals.
Gravity well that effectively ate the incoming laser.

Maybe make it a variation of flak?

[Droid803]

For the beam-absorber, you'd have to make the subspace vortex a ship that will appear, take the beam, then vanish...
This will only really ever work if your battle is completely scripted with fire-beam.

[Mobius]

Not exactly. All you need is to do is:

- Set the subspace effect as impact effect of the beams;

- Make sure that the beam won't inflict any damage. In order to do this, use armor.tbl and make changes to the beams' table entry in weapons.tbl...I'd suggest using the "multiplicative: 0.0" calculation;

- Enjoy!

[Aardwolf]

But what if the beam doesn't hit the ship that has that property? (What if something gets in the way or it misses)

[Mobius]

In that case you should adapt the armor.tbl and the weapons.tbl to any occurrence to prevent the damage...

In case a different target is hit, well, I don't know...try to design the mission to prevent that...

[Droid803]

If you set the beam damage to zero and such...there would be issues if the player (or another fighter) 'accidentally' flies into the beam. It'd look strange, to say the least.

[Aardwolf]

It could probably be done using scripting, possibly using the conditional hook for weapon-ship impacts.

* Aardwolf has gotten an idea just now, and will post it in the SCP board...

[Mobius]

If you set the beam damage to zero and such...there would be issues if the player (or another fighter) 'accidentally' flies into the beam. It'd look strange, to say the least.

But the damage is 0 only when the beam hits a certain ship. That's why you need armor.tbl to make this beam work.

[Droid803]

Actually, wouldn't the warp effect still appear on your fighter (but you'd just be vaporized?)