The only problem with a beam weapon (or any weapon, for that matter), is accidentally hitting a friendly. I used Mission Control (Set) to set the misbits so it would "appear" as though I had done the missions. When doing the Astrodyne Outpost missions, in the regular EV you steal the tractor beam, right? In Empire, what you get is an EM beam which is a beam that, instead of tractoring things in, pushes them away! The Weave gave it to me, but I got rid of it when I sold my Beam Cruiser and bought the prototype Support Carrier (even though I dislike using fighters, the ship is worth it). It did come with the x-ray laser, which, IMHO, is much better than the alien disruptor beam that is available. Now I'm in the middle of helping the Weave conquer the Terrans. I've completed all the missions up to the "conquer Earth" mission. It seems that no matter what, during each battle, I apparently accidentally hit one of the ships flying with me, because, all of a sudden, some of them decide to turn red on me. Oh, well. The admiral should tell the captains of the ships that are to go into battle with me to let me hyper in first, to take out the majority of the defenders, then go in and finish the job. At the very least they could be warned that they could accidentally be hit by my beam, so, if you do, don't get mad! The one big problem with unguided missiles/rockets is the distinct possibility of accidentally hitting a friendly. That's why I like guided weapons. Ya know, at one point, I took the "MERCENARY WANTED" mbbs mission, went looking for the "small-fleet pirate ships," and found several ships in THX-1138 that had no graphics, just the targetting box to tell me where they were. They also had a shield level of -101, which went directly to 100 (that's +100) without going through zero, whenever I fired on them! The x-ray laser had no effect on them at all! I just left them where they were and aborted the mission. Weird, huh?
-Ace
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Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur
- Oh! Was I speaking Latin again? Silly me. Sometimes it just sort of slips out