Beam cannon blindness...

[steve_v]

So, I see the fancy new player reward ship can mount fusion beam cannons in the front turret... But doing so makes it completely un-flyable from the 1st person view due to the (clearly bugged, PALC is the same) oversized beam effect.
Any way to tone this down to something sensible, or at least a beam that isn't 10x the width of the turret firing it and blindingly white?

The plasma beam cannon, OTOH... That doesn't appear to have any FX at all. The lore doesn't exactly describe it as an X-ray laser, so I'd kinda expect to see a beam and all.

Ed. Looks like X3 Editor2 still mostly works, and the old PBC effect from TC/AP makes a reasonable stand-in for the bung FX in FL. The reason the PBC has no FX is because it references an (obviously) non-existent file.
Here's a tarball with a modified TBullets.pck, Dunno whether it needed changed in both addon and addon2, so did both.
PBC, PALC and FBC all switched to the old PBC effect, seems to work okay so far, at least I can mostly see where I'm going now.

[Deathifier]

I think those effects are the same as they were in TC/AP.

The Plasma Beam Cannon is the same weapon on lasertowers and looks much the same as I remember it looking in past games - a thin orange-ish coloured beam with no effects around it.

The Tri-Beam Cannon looks the same as the PALC from AP - a thin white beam with a white cloud around it.
When fired as a group those clouds merge and get very bright, which is what obscures your vision.
Reducing or removing the clouds would probably address the vision issue.

I'm not sure why you were not seeing the PBC effects however they are certainly there.

[steve_v]

I'm not sure why you were not seeing the PBC effects however they are certainly there.

Huh. I guess it could be a GOG release problem, or possibly even specific to the GNU/Linux build. I see no PBC effect whatsoever in game, and poking about in the .cat files shows it pointing at a path (effects\X3AP\weapons\TOL_bullet) that is completely different from any other weapon and obviously leads nowhere.
Frankly the "X3AP" in there looks like a leftover from development to me, everything else is passed as a numeric reference or a relative path such as 'effects\weapons\foo'. There's no 'X3AP' subdirectory in any of the cats or the game's install layout. I can't find 'TOL_bullet' anywhere either.

As for the "cloud" thing and the beams overlapping... I guess that's what it could be... It sure looks pretty broken to me though, the overall effect is that the beam is huge in comparison to the turret, bright white, and pretty much without any detail at all.
The PALC looks indistinguishable from the FBC in game, and though I haven't tested the TBC, from the reference in the T file I expect it to be identical as well.

While I'm sure switching those weapons to use 'bullet_PlasmaBeam' instead may not be ideal, it sure looks a lot less awful, and it makes the Kogarasu flyable with FBC in the front.
If you have a better idea that keeps the new effects without the negative gameplay impact, I'm open to suggestions.

[Deathifier]

Can't help with the potential path issues although it is possible the reference somehow got messed up on a non-Steam build, however the effect is there for me and I use PBC's frequently.

To see the cloud effect for the PALC/etc. I'm talking about try just firing a single weapon - when I do that the individual beam is very clear and around it is a lighting effect that you'd expect from a directional light in an atmosphere, but that looks more like a cloud around the beam in space.
If I fire three (I only had three to test with when I posted earlier) then something happens with that lighting effect even if the beams don't overlap and the result is the cloud gets really bright and gives it the appearance of being a huge beam.

I recall when I tried PALC's in X3AP on a Pteranodon I fired 8 of them from a turret, saw my frame rate dive through the floor, was amazed at how completely ineffective they were at actually doing damage, then promptly junked the Pteranodon.
It was very pretty, and looked just like the tri-beam cannon in X3FL (I think all beams besides the PBC use the PALC-style effects), yet had the same issue you raised - you can't really see if you're doing the shooting, a problem that is a bit more obvious now with the fancy special M6.

I think the damage issue has been addressed, but not whatever is causing the lighting effect to behave like it does.

As for alternative options, using the PBC effect would be my suggestion too, but change its colour so it doesn't look the same as the PBC.

[steve_v]

it is possible the reference somehow got messed up on a non-Steam build

That's my guess too, it certainly wouldn't be the first time.

I think all beams besides the PBC use the PALC-style effects

They do, reference in TBullets confirms this observation.

I think the damage issue has been addressed, but not whatever is causing the lighting effect to behave like it does.

Indeed. The lighting effect is clearly still horribly broken.
I'm not sure if it's related to the damage issue you mention, but now that I can see the beams properly I notice that the turret AI doesn't actually fire any of the beam weapons on target - rather it's a spread around the target point. This heavily nerfs their instant-hit nature, and makes damage output WRT fighters pretty disappointing. Doubly so as the PALC in particular is advertised as an anti-fighter weapon.

As for alternative options, using the PBC effect would be my suggestion too, but change its colour so it doesn't look the same as the PBC.

As all the editing tools are both extremely old and very windows-only, I really don't think I have the motivation to go editing the effect itself.
I think I'll settle for the non-blinding, non-framerare-raping beams that little text edit got me for the moment... It'd sure be nice if I didn't have to, ya know, fix the damn game myself though. I mean this thing is at version 1.2 "final release" and all.

FWIW, bullet_PlasmaBeam is actually blue/white in my game, I don't have a non-borked copy of that cat file to look at right now, so I'm not sure what the correct reference is for the red beam you mention.
Anyhow, vOv I guess. It werks now. Blue is fine.

Now, If I can just figure out how to keep those bloody xenon Ks out of Freedoms Reach for 5 minutes at a stretch, I might actually get something done.

[Hwitvlf]

it is possible the reference somehow got messed up on a non-Steam build

That's my guess too, it certainly wouldn't be the first time.

I'm a Goger too and the PBC shows fine, just like AP. The other beam weapons look just like the PALC in AP.

I'm not sure if it's related to the damage issue you mention, but now that I can see the beams properly I notice that the turret AI doesn't actually fire any of the beam weapons on target - rather it's a spread around the target point. This heavily nerfs their instant-hit nature, and makes damage output WRT fighters pretty disappointing. Doubly so as the PALC in particular is advertised as an anti-fighter weapon.

As far as I know, all weapons have always had a randomized area of fire. It becomes minimized when you use auto-aim, but fire any weapon and you'll see the projectiles end up in a slightly randomized directions.

The beam weapons stop tracking while they're firing, so they go off target if your ship is moving. It helps to stay parked, or get as close as possible to the target. They work amazingly well against fighters at close range, but not so great at 5km away. This isn't too bad since fighter weapons have a short range forcing them to move close. In general, I would say they are slightly less potent than a FLAK against fighters, but have the massive benefit of guaranteed hits on capitals and missile immunity. The Carrack with 8 PBCs can take out anything in the game.

[Deathifier]

When the beams are fired they don't always pass through your aim point, often their endpoint is somewhere close to it and if it happens to pass through your target then that's great.

The endpoints do not change until you stop firing (or more accurately, the firing orientation of each weapon doesn't change, so if you turn your ship the beams turn too), so if you are manually firing and no damage is being done then stop and try again, however if you hit them and hold down fire they will shred your target.

On AI controlled turrets it's not a big deal since they pulse fire and thus if they miss it won't be for long.

I view the beams as anti-capital weapons however in larger numbers or at close range they seem to do better against fighters and something causes them to have quite good performance vs. missiles at close range so I suspect the actual beam hitbox is larger than is visible, or maybe it is as large as the PALC's "big beam" appearance.

Against capitals PBC's perform very well and are my current favourite weapon for boarding and destroying capitals, particularly 1v1.
On paper the other beams don't seem as powerful and I have yet to test them, however they should behave the same when firing.

[Hwitvlf]

Speaking of missiles, that's actually how beam weapons destroy a lot of fighters: detonating area-affect missiles shortly after the fighter launches them. Same with Firestorm Torpedoes and capitals, you actually have to be careful when boarding.

[steve_v]

The Carrack with 8 PBCs can take out anything in the game.

I can't say I've exactly tried it on "anything in the game", but the Brigantine with 32 PBCs is interesting... In a "melt everything" kinda way. (full-pirate RP playthrough)
Positioned correctly one can get at least 16 beams on a target, 24 if it's large enough to get both the top and bottom banks firing at the same time. The weapon generator obviously can't keep that up for long, but then it doesn't exactly need to.

[WinterSnowfall]

Huh. I guess it could be a GOG release problem, or possibly even specific to the GNU/Linux build.

Sorry for the necro, but I wanted to say thank you for your fix. I'm also using the GOG Linux build and wasn't seeing any type of orange beam/PBC/lasertower effects. It might be that only the offline installers are affected, since I'm not a Galaxy user. Without your fix combat with lasertowers would have been a real PITA. Here's to hoping it gets a proper (orangey) fix one day, but based on my experience it's at least a few years away though .

P.S.: Do you happen to remember which cat file had the broken reference? I want to attempt copying over the same file from the Windows GOG version of the game, to see if that does anything.

[steve_v]

It might be that only the offline installers are affected, since I'm not a Galaxy user.

Quite possibly, I don't use Galaxy either if I can possibly help it, since it's never worked natively on GNU/Linux or reliably through WINE... Even if it wasn't an obnoxious resource hog, which it is.
Frankly why every game store thinks people want their advertising-riddled "social features" "launcher" frontend when delta-based update patches have existed for decades is beyond me.

P.S.: Do you happen to remember which cat file had the broken reference? I want to attempt copying over the same file from the Windows GOG version of the game, to see if that does anything.

Not off the top of my head, but IIRC it was pretty easy to find just going through the files with X3 Editor2.

[Sovereign01]

I have noticed that when the Kogarasu Maru encounters a Xenon capital ship it will equip beam cannons in its front turret and sure enough, I'm blind and have to switch to one of the external views. Not ideal when you're trying to avoid colliding with a ship that's more massive than yours!

[WinterSnowfall]

Not off the top of my head, but IIRC it was pretty easy to find just going through the files with X3 Editor2.

So I went ahead and had a look... getting X3 Editor2 to work in Wine was a pain, but it limped along to where I needed to be. There's a bunch of things I've found:
- cat files are more or less identical between Linux and Windows installations
- effects\X3AP\weapons\TOL_bullet does actually exist in the addon/01.cat file (it's under objects, but that seems to be the "root" mount for these things in other cat files as well)
- if I reference a completely bougs path (instead of effects\X3AP\weapons\TOL_bullet) that breaks things even more, as it also drops the sound effects of the weapons firing, so that reference is definitely doing something, just not graphics wise for some reason...

I'm kind of new to this whole thing, so can't really figure out what the problem is, sadly. Maybe they simply packaged a wrong/corrupted version of TOL_bullet?