[KeldorKatarn]

Is there any way to specify that fighters should have different explosions than capital ships?

Right now they both use the two large explosions it seems.

There is some explosion entry in the ships.tbl but the documentation on it is a bit small so I don't really get how it is used...

[Nighteyes]

I sent you a PM, but for all to know, yes it is possible, here is a part of a ships.tbl file for reference:

$Expl inner rad:           10.0
$Expl outer rad:           25.0
$Expl damage:              10.0
$Expl blast:               1000.0
$Expl Propagates:          NO
$Vaporize Percent Chance:    75
$Shockwave Speed:          0.0
$Explosion Animations:       (6,7)
$Allowed PBanks:           ( "MEC-A6" "MEC-A6#Weak" "TL-2" )
$Allowed Dogfight PBanks:       ( "MEC-A6" "MEC-A6#Weak" "TL-2" )

this is what you need:$Explosion Animations:, where the numbers refere to fireball.tbl and the counting begins at 0, and if you set it to propagate then make sure your not using more then 2 explosion as the engine wont handle it...
if you want to use 2 sets, one for capships and one for fighters, I would suggest to take the smaller ship group(fighters) and add $Explosion Animations: to it, and the rest of the ships(capships for instance) can use the normal way explosions work...

[KeldorKatarn]

But I thought the number of explosions in fireball.tbl was fixed? There are only 3 explosions in there. The medium one, the two large ones and the two warp animations.

[Nighteyes]

in fireball.tbl the first few values are hardcoded, such as the 2 main explosions, the warp animation and such... but at the end of it you can add more effects, and use them as main explosions for specific ships as I mentioned above.
#Start

$Name:   Exp_Huge(can be any explosion you want); Used for the 4 little explosions before a ship explodes and subsystem explosions
$LOD:      1

$Name:   FTL               ; Used for the warp in / warp out effect
$LOD:      1

$Name:   FTL               ; Used for the alternate warp in / warp out effect
$LOD:      1

$Name:   Exp_Asteroid            ; Used when an asteroid explodes
$LOD:      1

$Name:   Exp_Huge                 ; ship explosion 1 - used for capships
$LOD:      1

$Name:   Exp_Large            ; ship explosion 2 - used for capships
$LOD:      1

$Name:   Exp_Fighter_Norm         ; normal fighter explosion, add this as alternate explosion in ships.tbl
$LOD:      1

$Name:   Exp_Fighter_Vapor         ; vaporized fighter explosion, add this as alternate explosion in ships.tbl
$LOD:      1

** as you can see in the above post, in ships.tbl I told the game to use alternate explosions 6 and 7, if you count these effects including 0 you will see that Exp_Fighter_Norm is number 6 and Exp_Fighter_Vapor is number 7

[KeldorKatarn]

Cool, thank you.