[Legate Damar]

Would it be possible to make it so that beams with the "no pierce shields" flag would visibly stop once they reached the shields of a target instead of appearing to penetrate them?

[Dragon]

Don't the already stop at the shield mesh? If they don't, then it should be fixed. Also, if so, can the beam segment under the shield mesh still damage a ship other than the ship the mesh belongs to?

[Legate Damar]

From everything I've seen beams always go through the shields (the shields light up) and impact the hull, causing a glowing damage effect on the hull, even if they're set not to pierce shields (the hull doesn't actually take any damage as long as the shields hold, but the visual effect is the same).

[Dragon]

Good catch. Could you also check if the beam which is under the shield can still damage other ships?

[Legate Damar]

I'd have to set up a mission to test it, but okay.

[Dragon]

It'd be great if you could that as an isolated mod runnable without mediavps or anything. That way, it could be attached to a Mantis bug report and easily reproduced by anyone. If I'll remember about it, I'll also run some tests on the matter myself.

[Legate Damar]

No retail ships have shield meshes large enough to test this AFAIK

[Black Wolf]

Isn't there a giant Askaladeian shield generator installation? That'd be a good test unit.

[EDIT] - http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/AKI_Alkahest

[Dragon]

No retail ships have shield meshes large enough to test this AFAIK

That's why I said "isolated mod". I meant just the shielded ship, the beam rigged for testing and nothing else. Alkahest would indeed be a nice test subject.

[Legate Damar]

Funny, I just tested it and it seems to work now. I guess it must have been fixed in a build I downloaded recently.

Still looks kind of ugly at certain angles, though:

[Luis Dias]

Of course it does. The beam is only a 2D sprite that gets cutoff whenever it reaches a mesh. In that case, the mesh is invisible and no splash occurs, thus the ugliness.

Code-fu magic is required to correct this behavior. The shield should behave just like it does with fighters when they are shot at.

e: oh wait, that effect does happen already. The image looked like two beams, but it's not two beams at all. The inclined one is the shield effect itself. Well, the point stands... it's the 2D sprite's fault.

[General Battuta]

Just put a giaaaant particle spew on the impact

[The E]

Personally, I am of the opinion that if you notice this while actually playing a mission (as opposed to examining the effect closely), you're doing it wrong.

That said, it would be nice if that transition effect could be prettied up; maybe we'll take a look at that at some point after 3.6.16.

[Droid803]

why not make it so it displays the impact effect on the shield mesh?
Or be able to specify a different impact effect for shields...

[Luis Dias]

why not make it so it displays the impact effect on the shield mesh?

It already is doing that. Take a closer look at that screenshot above.... the effect is just being seen in a very perpendicular way, and that's why it almost looks like a second beam coming from above right.

[Ace]

I think he means a beam impact explosion not the shield impact effect.

[Luis Dias]

ohrightrightsorry

[Dragon]

The problem is, the beam impact is usually a fiery explosion, so how to justify this where there's nothing to make fire? There should be a separate effect for the beam hitting the shield.

[Luis Dias]

Like what exactly? There's a lot of energy from the shield being turned into heat by the beam, thus draining the shield... I could imagine some kind of energetic filaments spraying from the impact, but that's a very complicated ani.

[Dragon]

Just a beam colored "heat ball", maybe the beam charge particle could be also be used as shield impact particle. Of course, since it won't be in Mediavps (retail wouldn't need that sort of thing), it'd be entirely up to modders what effect they put there. SCP's job ends when adding such an effect is possible (and bug-free), they don't need to worry about making the actual effect file (for testing, any would suffice). Two table entries ($Shield Impact Effect: and $Shield Impact Radius: ) in weapons.tbl would do the job. Ideally, they'd work for normal weapons, too (overriding the normal impact effect).