beams shouldn't instantly disappear

[Falcrack]

When firing beam weapons, they usually have a speed, they do not instantly reach their targets. But when the beam turns off, the entire length of the beam disappears at once. Logically, what should happen is that when a beam is turned off, it should turn off at the source, with the trailing end of it following behind. I hope what I wrote makes sense.

Either that, or make beam travel speed essentially instantaneous, like a proper laser.

It is demonstrated in this video:
https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/ ... ck_but_it/

[Alan Phipps]

Too late, somebody else said it first.

[mr.WHO]

I reported it several times, but I never got any response from Egosoft.

This is now really painful, especially with Asgard XL beam.

They should be consistent - either start/stop immediately, or start/stop like a jet stream in X-Rebirth, where you can see beam stream visibly traveling both when start and when end.

Currently it travel when start, but dissapear immediately when ends.

[abisha1980]

this is how lasers, beams, pulse should look like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zZVgJh9QQw

why Egosoft made it like they have i don't know i think it must be a engine thing or something

[LameFox]

It does look pretty weird to see it slowly leak out of the gun then just flick off when it's done. In my view beams should just be instantaneous weapons that track slowly. Their damage is already pitiful, so seeing it coming is of questionable value. But if they don't want that I'm not sure why the end of the beam doesn't carry on until it reaches the end of the projectile's lifespan.

[adeine]

Beams are definitely weird in X4 and feel 'fake' for lack of a better word. I think it's partially the weird travel behaviour, but also lack of audio feedback and impact effects. I don't know how feasible it is to implement proper beam weaponry in the engine but it would be a huge improvement if:

1. Beams faded in and out as a contiguous whole with no travel speed, dispersing at the edge of effective range
2. Instead of having a delay by means of travel speed to hit, beams visibly and audibly spool up and down between shots
3. Beams have more impact on lighting at source and target and produce lasting impact effects suggesting they actually superheat/melt things they hit. Particularly when slashing across capital ships.

Example of what I'm talking about.