[StargateSpankyHam]

For the most part, converging autoaim FOV works great. I'm using it to extend fighter engagement ranges out to ~4 KM, so that sniping does not require superhuman feats of aiming. At least, it works great for all weapons except one: The Shivan dogfighting beam cannon.

This is a player-usable weapon, but in dogfight testing, the beam cannon fails apocalyptically and miserably at long range. The converging autoaim FOV does not seem to work with the beam cannon, which means that trying to snipe fighters from 4 KM away is a massive pain in the butt. At first, I thought it may be because I set it as a type-4 beam (fires down normals), and the converging autoaim FOV function might not be playing with the normals...so I set it to a type 0 (normal direct-fire beam). Same result. Finally, I set it to a type 1 beam (slash-beam), since they're engineered to sweep around and do things. However, the beams still never sweep toward the target.

Is it possible (and more importantly, practical) to make player-usable beam cannons and converging autoaim FOV work together?

If not, I could re-engineer the dogfighting beam cannon as a <500 meter knife-fighting weapon, but my original intention was to make it a long-range, energy-hogging alternative to a more ordinary, projectile-type Shivan weapon.

[Droid803]

Errr, there's no leading required for beams so autoaim would have to work a bit differently for them.
You can just aim the beam manually and let converging autoaim on the rest of your weapons "pick up the slack".
Aiming a fighterbeam is as easy as putting your reticle over the enemy...

You may want to increase the beam's "radius" to make it easier to catch targets with it.

[StargateSpankyHam]

You can just aim the beam manually and let converging autoaim on the rest of your weapons "pick up the slack".
Aiming a fighterbeam is as easy as putting your reticle over the enemy...

Under ordinary circumstances, yes, but this is not occuring at retail distances or speeds. We're talking about interceptors at 4 Km out, moving at ~300 meters per second. Even if they happen to be afterburning straight at you, a single pixel makes the difference between hit or miss.

I had considered increasing the beam's hit radius, but at that range, the hit radius would have to be increased to some nightmarishly massive number. A single tick of damage from the beam weapon does relatively incosequential damage, at the moment.

If it is not practical to make the beam autoaim-FOV-compatible, I'll make it a knife-fighting weapon with some fierce attenuation, where the lack of autoaim FoV would not matter anyway. At shorter ranges, it is already much easier to score consistent hits - it's just mathematically balanced as a sniping weapon right now.

[Droid803]

Oh well, yeah at high speeds fighterbeams tend to suck at hitting things (for the player that is, the AI seems to have absolutely no problem)

[An4ximandros]

Have you thought about making the beam weapon a turret? One you turn on and off through a Sexpe?