THE FREESPACE 2 BEAM REFERENCE

by Clay "ZylonBane" Halliwell
clay.h@att.net
last updated: August 25, 2000

If you spot any errors or omissions in this FAQ, please drop me a line. And thanks for supporting the FS2 community!

-- ZylonBane

• Why don't the capships in my missions fire their beams?
• How do I unlock the beams?
• I made a beam-free event for my ship, but it still won't fire! What's wrong?
• What's a "slash" beam?
• What are all the beam-related SEXPs?
• How do I get a capship to fire on a target, but not fly toward it?
• What do all these different beam colors mean?
• How far will a beam fire?
• How often will a beam fire?
• Do beams do less damage at greater distances?
• Sometimes I'll see a beam start to power up, but then power down without firing. What happened?
• How do I stop a ship firing its beams after it's dead?
• I put a Mjolnir in a mission, and beam-freed it, but it never fires. What's wrong?
• Why are anti-fighter beams referred to as "AAA"?
• Which ships can I put beams on?
• What about the Shivan Super Laser?

• THE BIG BEAM REFERENCE TABLE
• THE BEAM RECORD BOOK

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

• Q. Why don't the capships in my missions fire their beams?
  A. Capship beams are, by default, "locked". This means they won't fire until unlocked.

• Q. How do I unlock the beams?
  A. You must create a beam-free-all event in the events editor. There has to be a separate SEXP (Symbolic EXPression) for every ship (right-click on the when and select Add Operator to add multiple action under a single event). If you only want to enable specific turrets (perhaps to simulate damage, or for play-balancing), use beam-free with the list of turrets to enable (right-click on the beam-free and select Add Data to add more turrets). Here's an example:

     when
        has-time-elapsed
           1
        beam-free-all
           ship name
        beam-free
           another ship name
           turret02
           turret07
  

• Q. I made a beam-free event for my ship, but it still won't fire! What's wrong?
  A. Could be a lot of things...
  A1. The beam-freeing event must be issued after the ship has arrived in the mission. If it's a ship that isn't initially present, create an event like this:

     when
        has-arrived-delay
           1
           ship name
        beam-free-all
           ship name
  

  A2. All targets are out of beam range. See the range column of the beam chart below.
  A3. No beams are facing any targets. Every capship turret has a defined field of view, or firing arc. Some are really wide, others really narrow.
  A4. The target doesn't have an opposing IFF setting.
  A5. The target has been given beam-protect status. This can be set with an event, or in the ship's Misc properties.
  A6. Some other ships were ordered to ignore the target. Due to a bug in FS2, ignore orders to fighters sometimes propagate up to capships.

• Q. What's a "slash" beam?
  A. As DaveB himself says, "Slash beams pick two points from two different octants of a given ship and move between them. This allows them to occasionally miss their target, or overshoot, or shoot too early. There's a list of something like 10 or so good octant pairs to move between when blasting a ship. Not that this really matters to mission designers...".

• Q. What are all the beam-related SEXPs?
  A. There are several SEXPs which deal exclusively with beams. Here they are, along with their help text straight from FRED2 (with a little cleaning up). Also note that the general turret/protect SEXPs also apply.

  beam-free
  	Sets one or more beam weapons to allow firing for a given ship.
  	1: Ship to be operated on
  	2, 3, etc.: List of turrets to activate
  
  beam-free-all
  	Sets all beam weapons on the specified ship to be active.
  
  beam-lock
  	Sets one or more beam weapons to NOT allow firing for a given ship.
  	1: Ship to be operated on
  	2, 3, etc : List of turrets to deactivate
  
  beam-lock-all
  	Sets all beam weapons on the specified ship to be deactivated.
  
  fire-beam
  	Fire a beam weapon from a specified subsystem.
  	1: Ship which will be firing
  	2: Turret which will fire the beam (note, this turret must have at least 1 beam weapon on it)
  	3: Ship which will be targeted
  Use add-data to add a specific subsystem to target on the specified target ship.
  
  beam-protect-ship
  	Protects a ship from being attacked with beam weapons. Any ship that is beam protected
  	will not come under enemy beam fire.
  Takes 1 or more arguments:
  	All: Name of ship(s) to protect.
  
  beam-unprotect-ship
  	Unprotects a ship from being attacked with beam weapons. Any ship that is not beam protected
  	can come under enemy beam fire. This function is the opposite of beam-protect-ship.
  Takes 1 or more arguments:
  	All: Name of ship(s) to protect.
  
  turret-tagged-only
  	Makes turrets target and hence fire strictly at tagged objects.
  	1: Ship name
  	NOTE: Will not stop a turret already firing at an untagged ship
  
  turret-tagged-clear
  	Relaxes restriction on turrets targeting only tagged ships.
  	1: Ship name
  

• Q. How do I get a capship to fire on a target, but not fly straight toward it (i.e.-- not give the capship the attack/chase command)?
  A1. The turret AI will cause beams to automatically fire on any hostile targets in their field of view.
  A2. Create a repeating fire-beam event which specifies the target. To keep things realistic, make the repeat interval time the same as the beam delay.

• Q. What do all these different beam colors mean?
  A. Beams are color-coded by species:

  	GREEN	Terran anti-capship
  	YELLOW	Vasudan anti-capship
  	BLUE	Terran/Vasudan anti-fighter
  	RED	Shivan anti-capship/anti-fighter

• Q. How far will a beam fire?
  A1. The distance at which the the turret AI will target and fire is determined by the Range value in the beam tables (see reference below).
  A2. If a beam is fired manually, it's a little more complicated. Some beams have a 30,000-meter physical limit. This means, once the beam length hits 30K, it just ends. The Terran slash and anti-fighter beams are *usually* infinite-range, but seem to clip back to 30K whenever they would be missing the target.
  • 30K Range
    BFRed, LRed, BFGreen, LRBGreen, BGreen, BVas, VSlash
    

  • Infinite Range
    SRed, SVas, SGreen, Green Beam, MjolnirBeam, MjolnirBeam#home

  • Unreliable Infinite Range
    TerSlash, LTerSlash, ULTRA AAA, AAAf, AAAh, SAAA, S-AAA-Weak

• Q. How often will a beam fire?
  A1. Once a beam fires, it must wait until at least the Delay value given in the beam tables before it can fire again.
  A2. If firing manually, a beam can fire as often as you like. In fact, you can have multiple beams firing from the same turret simultaneously. If you do this in a mission though, you'd better provide a darn good explanation!

• Q. Do beams do less damage at greater distances?
  A. No. A beam hit at point-blank range will do just as much damage as when it hits something a kilometer away.

• Q. Sometimes I'll see a beam start to power up, but then power down without firing. What happened?
  A. While the beam was powering up, its target moved out of its field of view.

• Q. I'll often see ships fire their beams even after they've been destroyed. This looks ridiculous... how do I stop it?
  A. Create what's become known as an "Anti-Frustration" event (so named because it's really frustrating to have something destroyed by a ship that's already dead). For each ship, create an event like this:

  	when
  	   is-destroyed-delay
  	      0
  	      ship name
  	   beam-lock-all
  	      ship name
  

• Q. I put a Mjolnir in a mission, and beam-freed it, but it never fires. What's wrong?
  A. The default Mjolnir beam only fires straight forward, thus it will only fire if something flies directly in front of it. To give the Mjolnir a little more flexibility, put the MjolnirBeam#home beam on it.

• Q. Why are anti-fighter beams referred to as "AAA"?
  A. Since about World War I, anti-fighter weaponry has been called "AAA" or "triple-A". It's short for "Anti-Aircraft Artillery".

• Q. Which ships can I put beams on?
  A. You can put any beam on any turret on any ship that isn't a fighter.

• Q. What about the Shivan Super Laser?
  A. While the Shivan Super Laser may look somewhat like a beam, in game terms it's more like a dumbfire missile with an invisible warhead and a really long trail. This was the main weapon on the Lucifer, the "boss" ship from FS1. It's still present in FS2 (as is the Lucifer), even though it's never used in the main campaign. You do not need to use a beam-free to enable ships to fire this weapon.

THE BIG BEAM REFERENCE TABLE (EXPURGATED VERSION)

ABOUT BEAM DAMAGE
The total damage dealt by a beam cycle is actually the value in the Damage column, multiplied by the Life value, multiplied by 5.5. This "ideal damage" assumes the beam is in contact with the target for the entire duration of the cycle.

The value 5.5 is an interval multiplier, representing how many times per second the Damage value is applied to the target. Unfortunately this value is only approximate, since in repeated controlled tests I observed that the damage a full beam cycle applies to a target will randomly vary by 1-2% under otherwise identical circumstances. So bear this in mind if the plot of your mission absolutely requires a given ship to be destroyed by beam fire.

Also, note that the threat potential of a beam is greatly affected by both its Life and Delay rankings. The SRed vs the Green Beam is a great example. Both beams do 200 damage per "tick", but the SRed fire cycle is almost twice that of the Green Beam, so the SRed does much more damage per shot. However, the Green Beam has a Delay less than half that of the SRed, so over time it will do more damage. This is the principle behind the Dmg/Min ranking.

BEAM ATTRIBUTES

Damage	Points of damage per "tick" the beam is active
Dmg/Cyc	Maximum possible damage per fire cycle (Damage*Life*5.5)
Dmg/Min	Theoretical damage per minute (60/(Delay+Life)*Dmg/Cyc)
Delay	Minimum time between shots, in seconds (excluding event-initiated shots)
Life	Duration of the beam, also in seconds
Range	Maximum distance at which the turret AI will target and fire
Type	See "BEAM TYPES"

BEAM TYPES
These numbers appear in the weapons.tbl entry for each beam.

0	anti-cap (only targets capital ships)
1	anti-cap slash (also only targets capital ships)
2	targetting laser (not used in the game; only fighter-mountable beam; no damage)
3	anti-fighter (fires three short bursts at fighters, or single long burst at caps if no fighters around)
4	fixed (only fires straight forward)

STANDARD BEAM WEAPONS (DAMAGE VALUES)

STANDARD BEAM WEAPONS (DETAIL, BY SPECIES)